Small spreadwing
The small spreadwing is a thin damselfly with a shiny metallic green body. When it lands, it holds its wings open and spread out, not folded along its back like most damselflies. It hides among the thick plants at the edge of ponds.
How fast is it?
Fun facts
The female lays her eggs in plant stems just above the water.
The eggs wait all winter and the babies hatch in spring. Then they grow up very fast.
It flies from June to September, and in the warm south sometimes already in April.
It does not live in northern Europe or in the United Kingdom.
Most asked questions about Small spreadwing
?Is the small spreadwing a dragonfly?
It is a damselfly, a slim cousin of the dragonflies.
?Where does the small spreadwing live?
In Europe, western and central Asia and North Africa, at still ponds, lakes, ditches and bogs with lots of plants.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Lestes virens
- Group
- Dragonflies and damselflies
- Family
- Lestidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Odonata > Lestidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia, Africa
- Also known as
- Small emerald spreadwing
Where the facts come from
- Lestes virens (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
- Picture by Daniel Ullrich, Threedots. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.
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