Celery fly

Euleia heraclei

Name means: “heraclei comes from hogweed, Heracleum, the plant it feeds on”

Eats: Plants Flies and mosquitoesGardens and meadows6 legs

The celery fly is a small fly with wide wings painted with brown bands and bright blue-green eyes. It changes colour with the seasons. Flies born for winter are almost black, and summer flies are shiny orange-brown.

Lives in

Most of Europe, also Estonia, Central Asia, Japan, North Africa and the Middle East, in vegetable gardens and open countryside

Length

5 to 7 mm (0.2 to 0.28 in)

Top speed

about 7.5 km/h (4.7 mph)

Flying, estimate

Can it hurt you?

Harmless

Harmless to people. Gardeners are not big fans, because its larvae spoil celery and parsnip leaves.

What does it eat?

The adults are found on hogweed. The larvae live inside the leaves of plants like celery, parsnip and hogweed and eat them from the inside.

Photo of Celery fly — Picture by Hectonichus. CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

small enough to sit on your fingernailcould fly across a whole football pitch in 50 secondsmoves 300 times its own body length every second

How big is Celery fly compared to YOU?

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

How fast is it?

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

Celery fly about 7.5 km/h (4.7 mph)

A kid running fast about 13 km/h (8.1 mph)

A grown-up on a bike about 25 km/h (16 mph)

cool stuff

Fun facts

Its larvae are leaf miners. They tunnel inside a leaf and leave a yellow or brown blotch.

On sunny spring days the males show off on top of leaves, waiting for a female to arrive.

When the larvae are fully grown, they drop to the ground and dig about 4 to 5 centimetres into the soil.

Two families of flies grow up every year. The second one spends the winter about 10 centimetres deep in the soil.

Its wings have brown bands, which is why it is also called a picture-wing fly.

you asked

Most asked questions about Celery fly

?Is the celery fly harmful?

Not to people. But its larvae damage the leaves of celery and parsnip, so gardeners see it as a pest.

?How big is a celery fly?

It is small, about 5 to 7 millimetres long.

For bug experts

Scientific name: Euleia heraclei
Group: Flies and mosquitoes
Family: Tephritidae
Classification: Insecta > Diptera > Tephritidae
Lives on: Europe, Asia, Africa
Also known as: Hogweed picture-wing fly

Where the facts come from

Euleia heraclei (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 Hectonichus. 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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