Cucullie de la scrofulaire MHNT Chenille

''Shargacucullia scrophulariae'', the water betony, is a

moth Moths are a paraphyletic group of insects that includes all members of the order Lepidoptera that are not butterflies, with moths making up the vast majority of the order. There are thought to be approximately 160,000 species of moth, many of w ...

of the family Noctuidae. It is found throughout

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirel ...

, east to

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula in ...

Technical description and variation

''C. scrophulariae'' Cap. (27 h). Not quite so broad as '' verbasci'', the forewing paler and duller in coloration; the dark brown costal streak overlaid with grey and so paler than those on inner margin; the ground colour below median hardly paler, not strikingly whitish; hindwing much as in verbasci. The

wingspan The wingspan (or just span) of a bird or an airplane is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777–200 has a wingspan of , and a wandering albatross (''Diomedea exulans'') caught in 1965 had a wingspan o ...

is about 45 mm.

Biology

The moth flies from May to August depending on the location. The larvae feed on ''

Scrophularia umbrosa ''Scrophularia umbrosa'', the green figwort, is a perennial herbaceous plant found in Europe and Asia. It grows in moist and cultivated waste ground. The species looks very similar to the closely related ''Scrophularia auriculata'' (water figw ...

'', '' Scrophularia nodosa'', ''

Scrophularia auriculata ''Scrophularia auriculata'', the shoreline figwort or water figwort, is a perennial plant of the genus Scrophularia in the family Scrophulariaceae. It is found commonly in Western Europe and North Africa, on the margins of rivers, ponds and simil ...

'', '' Scrophularia canina'', ''

Verbascum lychnitis ''Verbascum lychnitis'', the white mullein, is a flowering plant in the figwort family (Scrophulariaceae) native to Asia and Europe. It has naturalized in parts of North America. The species was first formally named by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. Desp ...

'' and ''

Verbascum thapsus ''Verbascum thapsus'', the great mullein, greater mullein or common mullein is a species of mullein native to Europe, northern Africa, and Asia, and introduced in the Americas and Australia. It is a hairy biennial plant that can grow to 2 m tal ...

''.

Similar species

''Shargacucullia scrophulariae'' is difficult to certainly distinguish from these congeners. See Townsend et al.Martin C. Townsend, Jon Clifton and Brian Goodey (2010)
''British and Irish Moths: An Illustrated Guide to Selected Difficult Species''
(covering the use of genitalia characters and other features) Butterfly Conservation. *''

Shargacucullia verbasci The mullein moth (''Cucullia verbasci'') is a Noctuidae, noctuid moth with a Palearctic distribution. The species was species description, first described by Carl Linnaeus in his landmark 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae, 10th edition of ''Sy ...

'' (Linnaeus, 1758) *''

Shargacucullia lychnitis ''Shargacucullia lychnitis'', the striped lychnis is a moth of the family Noctuidae. It is found throughout most parts of Europe the Near East and Middle East (Lebanon, Israel, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkmenistan and Iraq). Technical description ...

'' (Rambur, 1833)

References

External links

Water Betony (''Cucullia scrophulariae'') on UKmoths

Fauna Europaea ''Cucullia (Shargacucullia) scrophulariae'' (Denis & Schiffermüller, 1775)

Lepiforum.de
Cuculliinae Moths of Europe Moths of Asia Taxa named by Michael Denis Taxa named by Ignaz Schiffermüller {{Cuculliinae-stub