Rose chafer
The rose chafer is a shiny beetle that glitters metallic green, like a jewel. On sunny days in early summer you can find it sitting in roses and other flowers. Some rose chafers are copper, violet, black or grey instead of green.
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Fun facts
Its green colour is not paint-like colour. It comes from the way its shell bounces light back.
Look at it through 3D cinema glasses and the green shine can disappear, so it looks colourless.
Unlike most beetles, it flies with its wing cases closed down.
Its larvae are fat and curled like a C. They live in compost and help turn waste into soil.
From egg to beetle takes about two years.
Most asked questions about Rose chafer
?Are rose chafers good for the garden?
Their larvae are helpful in compost heaps, because they eat rotting plants. The beetles may nibble some flowers.
?Do rose chafers bite?
No. They are harmless to people.
?How big is a rose chafer?
About 2 centimetres long.
For bug experts
- Scientific name
- Cetonia aurata
- Group
- Beetles
- Family
- Scarabaeidae
- Classification
- Insecta > Coleoptera > Scarabaeidae
- Lives on
- Europe, Asia
- Also known as
- Green rose chafer
Where the facts come from
- Cetonia aurata (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 Chrumps. 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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