Unexpected beauties
● YELLOW-LIPPED SNAIL Smaller than the garden snail, this slippery fellow has exquisite whorls of brown and creamy-yellow, and you’ll love it even more once you learn that its favourite foods include nettle, other coarse weeds and dead and decaying plant matter.
● FLOWER CRAB SPIDER Apologies to any arachnophobes, but this is surely our best-looking spider, barely resembling one at all. It’s usually cream-coloured and sits in the middle of flowers waiting to grab small prey.
● WOUNDWORT SHIELDBUG If you have hedge woundwort weeds in your garden with soft, nettleshaped leaves that smell when you crush them and spikes of purple, hooded flowers adored by bumblebees, it’s likely to be hosting this small shieldbug. Its larvae feed on the leaves and its shield is perfection, with black and white dots around the margin and a particularly bronzy central triangle. It’s up to 1cm (½in) long.
● CINNAMON BUG The scientific name, Corizus hyoscyami, is difficult to say and remember, so I hope its English name will come into common usage. These bugs are unmistakeable – bright red with bold black markings. Its wings are only half the length of the body, so the dark rear end protrudes like a diamond. Expanding its range northwards, this bug has reached at least Yorkshire, so Scotland here it comes! They nibble on all sorts of plants, but never to the point that causes concern.
● VIOLET GROUND BEETLE Many long-legged
black beetle species live under logs and stones. These ground beetles are typically flightless and nocturnal, charging through the garden eating insects, worms and (hoorah!) slugs. The violet ground beetle, up to 35mm (1½in) long, has a gorgeous, purplish metallic shine in sunlight, brightest along its margins.
● BLOODY-NOSED BEETLE Black, domed and shiny, this beetle plods across the ground on feet flattened into ludicrous flared slippers. Just under an inch long, it can’t fly – its wing cases are fused together – and it’s often seen wandering across grassy paths looking for bedstraw plants to gently munch on.