Leaf-mine: Long, extremely narrow lower- or upper-surface corridor, with a black or brown central frass line. After a while this primary mine is vacated, and the larva starts making shorter, much broader, full depth blotch mines. In the end the larva lives free among spun leaves (Bladmineerders van Europa).

The mine is also illustrated in UKMoths.

Larva: The larvae can live on plants on the lowest parts of saltings, which are frequently immersed by the tide (UKMoths).

Dirty yellow with a red length line; head light brown; pronotum, anal shield and thoracic feet black (Bladmineerders van Europa).

Pupa: The pupa is illustrated in UKMoths.

Adult: The adult is illustrated in UKMoths. The female genitalia, but not the male genitalia (check for update), are illustrated by the Lepidoptera Dissection Group.

Comments: According to the literature also on Aster tripolium and Suaeda maritima, but probably this concerns occasional observations or confusion with the mines of Bucculatrix maritima (Bland, 2002a; Jansen, in litt.)

The list of hostplants presented by Elsner et al. (1999a), including Atriplex, Spergularia media and even Ferula is bizarre (Bladmineerders van Europa).

Hosts in Britain:

Hosts elsewhere:

Time of year - larvae: May (UKMoths).

Time of year - adults: June - September (UKMoths).

Distribution in Great Britain and Ireland: Found on saltings in England and Wales where its foodplants grow (UKMoths) including Dorset, East Kent, East Suffolk, Glamorgan, Isle Of Wight, North Lincolnshire, South Essex, South Hampshire and West Sussex (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). It is regarded as a local and difficult-to-record species (MBGBI 4-2), and can probably be most easily found by searching for larvae from late April to early June (UKMoths).

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 continental Europe including Albania, Austria, Balearic Is., Belgium, Bulgaria, Corsica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Danish mainland, Finland, French mainland, Germany, Greek mainland, Hungary, Italian mainland, Latvia, Poland, Portuguese mainland, Romania, Russia - South, Sardinia, Sicily, Spanish mainland, Sweden, The Netherlands and Ukraine (Karsholt and van Nieukerken in Fauna Europaea).

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

Parasitoids in Britain and elsewhere: Unknown.