Mine of Hydrellia griseola on Glyceria fluitans Image: Willem Ellis (Bladmineerders van Europa)

Leaf-mine: Irregular mine, locally shallow, elsewhere much deeper, giving it a mottled appearance. In broadleaved plants the mine often begins as a blotch with stellate extensions, but sometimes as a very fine, shallow corridor. In grasses the mine often begins in the leaf sheath. The frass is very fine-grained, initially scattered, later in aggregates. The egg is deposited on the plant surface, and the empty egg shell remains visible. But the larvae are able to leave their mine and restart elsewhere, thus mines without an egg shell can be found as well. The larva also leaves the mine before pupation. Pupation takes place in a newly made, small, blotch mine without frass; this mine may be made in another plant (species) (Bladmineerders van Europa).

Larva: Details unknown.

Puparium: Whitish to dark grey. The puparium is illustrated in Bladmineerders van Europa.

Comments: A polyphagous species recorded mainly from Poaceae and Cyperaceae, but also recorded from Liliaceae, Typhaceae, Asteraceae, Alismataceae, Brassicaceae, Caryophyllaceae, Chenopodiaceae, Hydrocharitaceae, Lamiaceae, Lemnaceae, Papaveraceae, Fabaceae, Polygonaceae, Scrophulariaceae and Verbenaceae. However, it may be that the true hosts are all grasses or sedges and that other records represent pupation sites!.

Irwin & Chandler in Chandler (1978) did not indicate whether their host records were British or Foreign and are therefore tentatively included under 'Hosts in Britain' and 'Hosts elsewhere', as are the records of Pitkin and Plant, which previously were assumed to be British.

Lychnis flos-cuculi is treated as Silene flos-cuculi (Ragged-Robin) and Rorippa nasturtium-aquaticum is treated as Nasturtium officinale (Water-cress) by Stace (2010).

Hosts in Britain:

Hosts elsewhere:

Time of year - mines: May, July and September (Hering, 1957).

Time of year - adults: Unknown.

Distribution in Great Britain and Ireland: Widespread in England including Warwickshire (Coombe, Kenilworth, Keresley and Tile Hill) (Robbins, 1991: 140); Anglesey, Caernarvonshire, Cambridgeshire, Carmarthenshire, Dorset, East Cornwall, East Gloucestershire, East Norfolk, East Suffolk, East Sussex, Glamorgan, Herefordshire, Huntingdonshire, Merionethshire, Middlesex, Monmouthshire, North Somerset, North-east Yorkshire, Northamptonshire, Nottinghamshire, Pembrokeshire, South Hampshire, South Wiltshire, Stafford, Warwickshire, West Cornwall, West Gloucestershire, West Norfolk, West Suffolk, West Sussex, Westmorland and Worcestershire (NBN Gateway - N.B. includes Watsonian Vice Counties having publicly available records that fall within or overlap the vice county border at 10km resolution or better i.e. a record for a vice county may relate to an adjacent vice county - for included datasets see NBN Grid map below).

Also recorded in the Republic of Ireland (Zatwarnicki, 2004 in Fauna Europaea).

NBN Grid map: Note that not all datasets on the NBN Gateway may be available on the map below. If you are an NBN Gateway registered user you can request access for missing datasets via the link 'Open interactive map in new window' below.

Distribution elsewhere: Widespread in the Palaearctic regionincluding The Netherlands (Bladmineerders van Europa), Belgium (Gosseries, 1991d), Andorra, Austria, Azores, Balaearic Is., Bulgaria, Canary Is., Corsica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Is., Finland, French mainland, Greek mainland, Hungary, Iceland, Italian mainland, Lithuania, Macedonia, Madeira, Malta, Norwegian mainland, Poland, Romania, Russia - North and Northwest, Sardinia, Sicily, Slovakia, Spanish mainland, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands and Yugoslavia (Zatwarnicki, 2004 in Fauna Europaea).

Also recorded from Nearctic and Australasian Regions (Zatwarnicki, 2004 in Fauna Europaea).

NBN interactive distribution map(s) of known host species in Great Britain and Ireland and elsewhere:

Parasitoids in Britain and elsewhere: