Family: Pentatomidae

Adult Size:  Length: ca. 11.0 to12.0 mm.

Identifying features: A large and distinctive purple-brown and greenish shieldbug which is covered with tiny brown hairs, which can be seen most easily on the pronotum and legs.. The antennae and connexivum are banded black and white. It becomes an overall dull brown in winter.

Habitat:  Tall vegetation and shrubs in hedgerows, meadows, parks and gardens and along the edge of woodland.

Months seen: This bug overwinters as an adult, in leaf-litter or in dead leaves remaining on the plant, emerging in the spring.

Adult: All year

Larvae: July to September, feeding on the flowers and occasionally the fruit of a wide variety of plants, especially Blackthorn, Damson and other Rosaceae. These are also hairy,

The new generation is complete from August onwards.

Distribution: Common and widespread in many habitats throughout Britain, particularly hedgerows and woodland edges, becoming scarcer and mainly coastal in the north.

Similar species

Holcostethus vernalis is a rare migrant, which is smaller (9.5 to 11.0 mm) and is not hairy.

Piezodorus lituratus in its sexually immature late summer form, is similar in size (10 to 13mm), but has a broad blue margin to the corium and a red band across the rear ofthe pronotum.

• Bantock (2018)
• Bantock & Botting (2018)
• Bradley (2017)
• Evans  & Edmondson (2005)
• Judd (2009 & 2010)
• Pendleton & Pendleton (1997—2018)
• Wikiwand (2018)
• Wikimedia Commons (2018)