Bug card No. 2880 of 4,939

Mint beetle

Chrysolina coerulans

Eats: Plants BeetlesGardens and meadows6 legs

The mint beetle is a small, round beetle that shines bright metallic blue. It loves mint and is often found sitting right on the mint leaves. Its babies are soft, round and black.

Lives in

Central and Eastern Europe and parts of Asia, and now also Britain, in damp meadows, by rivers and in gardens

Length

0.6 to 1 cm (0.24 to 0.39 in)

Top speed

about 0.41 km/h (0.25 mph)

On foot, estimate

Can it hurt you?

Harmless

Harmless to people. It only nibbles holes in mint leaves.

What does it eat?

Both the beetles and their larvae eat mint leaves, like garden mint, spearmint and wild horse mint. It also eats tansy.

Photo of Mint beetle — Picture by Sebastian Weisz. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

small enough to sit on your fingernailas long as 1.5 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 8.8 seconds

How big is Mint beetle compared to YOU?

Just maths in your browser. Nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

How fast is it?

A garden snail about 0.05 km/h (0.03 mph)

A tortoise about 0.3 km/h (0.19 mph)

Mint beetle about 0.41 km/h (0.25 mph)

A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)

cool stuff

Fun facts

Its name coerulans comes from Latin and means turning blue.

It was first found in Britain in 2011, and gardeners were asked to look for blue beetles on their mint.

It lives from low riverbanks all the way up into mountains at 1,650 metres.

Inside its body it has special glands with bitter chemicals that help keep it safe.

It is active during the day and lives for about a year.

you asked

Most asked questions about Mint beetle

?Is the mint beetle harmful?

Not to people. It eats holes in mint leaves, but mint plants are tough and can handle it.

?How big is a mint beetle?

About 6 to 10 millimetres long, a bit smaller than a fingernail.

?What does the mint beetle eat?

Mint leaves. Both the adults and their young eat them in spring and summer.

For bug experts

Scientific name: Chrysolina coerulans
Named by: Scriba, 1791
Group: Beetles
Family: Chrysomelidae
Classification: Insecta > Coleoptera > Chrysomelidae
Lives on: Europe, Asia
Also known as: Blue mint beetle, Blue mint leaf beetle

Where the facts come from

Chrysolina coerulans (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 Sebastian Weisz. CC BY-SA 4.0, 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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