Larch Ladybird

What with one thing and another, this is turning out to be a crazy week. Today's madness was the Boy Wonder bringing his mother over for a visit, and by the time I'd prepared a batch of chilli con carne and set it seething in the slow cooker, then rushed to the supermarket for a few more crucial bits and pieces, I found myself with only about half an hour for bug bothering before their arrival.

Not that this is a bug, of course, if we're being picky. It is, though, only the second Larch Ladybird I've ever seen, which makes it a reasonably noteworthy beetle. When I found the first one, six months ago in a conifer in the wild garden, I called it "nondescript", and blogged the far more photogenic Lesser Thorn-tipped Longhorn Beetle instead, but today the ladybird has less competition and makes it to the top of the podium. It's still a bit uninspiring, if I'm honest, but we can't all be Ingrid Bergman. 

So. What facts can I give you? The Larch Ladybird is only 4-5mm long (the 7-spot is typically 6-7mm), and these spotty mid-brown wing cases, with an oblique darker smudgy line at the rear of each one, and another along their intersection, are typical. However, as with many of the so-called conspicuous ladybirds, there can be variations: it may have up to ten spots, and there's also a melanic form, though that's rare in the UK. The brown-black marking on the pale pronotum is usually described as resembling a letter 'M', though I'd argue that... no, never mind. 

The species is a conifer specialist, reputedly favouring larch, Norway spruce, Douglas fir, and Scots pine, but given that we don't have any of those, and I found this one on a photinia located between a Lawson cypress and a Himalayan pine, I'm prepared to suggest that it may have missed the memo about being environmentally fussy. Probably more pertinently, all stages of this ladybird feed on conifer aphids and scale insects, so it's likely to thrive where these are present. It overwinters as an adult in the bark crevices of needled conifers, or among the leaves of ivy growing on their trunks.