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Sticker of Cypress jewel beetle
Bug card No. 1262 of 4,939

Cypress jewel beetle

Lamprodila festiva
Eats: WoodBeetlesGardens and meadows6 legs

The cypress jewel beetle is a small beetle that shines metallic green, like a jewel, with steel-blue spots. It comes from the lands around the Mediterranean Sea. Its babies live inside the wood of junipers and cypress trees.

Lives in
Around the Mediterranean Sea, and now spreading north across Europe
Length
0.6 to 1.2 cm (0.24 to 0.47 in)
Top speed
about 0.45 km/h (0.28 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It does not bite or sting people.
What does it eat?
Its babies chew their way through the wood of junipers, cypresses and their relatives.
For real!Photo of Cypress jewel beetle
Picture by Siga. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Cypress jewel beetle about 1.2 cm long (0.47 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
as long as 2 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 8 seconds

How big is Cypress jewel beetle compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its babies have no legs and grow 15 to 20 millimetres long, longer than the grown-up beetle.

2

Since the early 2000s it has been moving north, and it has reached Belgium, Poland and Ukraine.

3

Scientists think it is spreading because the climate is getting warmer.

4

Gardeners do not like it, because its babies can badly damage garden conifers.

you asked

Most asked questions about Cypress jewel beetle

?Is the cypress jewel beetle dangerous?

Not to people. It is harmless to touch, but it can harm junipers and other garden conifers.

?How big is the cypress jewel beetle?

The grown-up beetle is 6 to 12 mm long.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Lamprodila festiva
Group
Beetles
Family
Buprestidae
Classification
Insecta > Coleoptera > Buprestidae
Lives on
Europe, Africa, Asia
Also known as
Juniper jewel beetle

Where the facts come from

  1. Lamprodila festiva (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by Siga. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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