Tanbark borer
Phymatodes testaceus
The tanbark borer is a slim longhorn beetle with long feelers. It comes in different colours, which is why one of its names says violet. Its babies grow up under the bark of trees.
Lives in
Europe, North Africa, Syria, Japan and North America, in forests and woodpiles
Length
0.6 to 1.6 cm (0.24 to 0.63 in)
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless to people. Its larvae can damage trees.
What does it eat?
Its larvae live in and under the bark of leafy trees and eat the wood there.
How big is it?
How long is it?
🍚as long as 2.5 grains of rice in a row🍽️could run across a dinner table in 11 seconds
How big is Tanbark borer 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)
Tanbark borer about 0.32 km/h (0.2 mph)
A person walking about 5 km/h (3.1 mph)
cool stuff
Fun facts
1
Its eggs are only about 1 millimetre long.
2
Its larvae can be up to about 1.8 centimetres long.
3
In warm places it grows up in one year, but in the cold north it takes two.
4
The larvae turn into pupae in spring.
you asked
Most asked questions about Tanbark borer
?Is the tanbark borer harmful?
It is harmless to people, but its larvae can damage leafy trees.
?How big is the tanbark borer?
The beetle is about 6 to 16 millimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Phymatodes testaceus
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Cerambycidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Cerambycidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Africa, Asia, North America
- Also known as
- Violet tanbark beetle
Where the facts come from
- Phymatodes testaceus (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 Donald Hobern from Copenhagen, Denmark. CC BY 2.0, 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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