Common grammoptera

Grammoptera ruficornis · Order: Coleoptera · Family: Cerambycidae

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Common grammoptera — Photo: Cosimo Costanzia di Costigliole, CC BY

Grammoptera ruficornis is a tiny longhorn beetle, only 3 to 7 mm long (about 0.12 to 0.28 in). The beetle lives in deciduous forests, glades and pastures, usually below 1 000 m in the Alps, and is found across most of Europe and parts of western Asia. Adults feed on the flowers of many trees and shrubs in spring and summer, while the larvae develop inside fungus-infested dead branches of deciduous trees.

Source: Wikipedia

How to recognize it

The beetle’s pronotum and elytra are densely punctate and not very narrow at the rear, with silky hairs on the elytra. Color is dark brown or black; antennae are long, yellow-red and almost as long as the body, with an elongated second segment; legs are partly yellow-red with bicoloured femora, though hind femora can be all black.

Source: Wikipedia

Size

Body length ranges from about 3 mm to 7 mm (0.12 to 0.28 in).

Source: Wikipedia

Where it lives

Found in deciduous forests, glades, pastures and on old deciduous trees. In the Alps it is usually below about 1 000 m elevation.

Source: Wikipedia

What it eats

Adults feed on flowers of buckthorn, beech, alder buckthorn, oak, manna ash, buck’s-beard, ground-elder, hawthorn, Anthriscus and dog rose during spring and summer. Larvae develop in dead, fungus-infested branches of deciduous trees.

Source: Wikipedia