The brand-new York Trailblazers project, led by York Civic Trust, is going to create a tansy beetle sculpture trail across York. In learning about the project, I realised I knew very little about tansy beetles, so I thought I'd best rectify that.
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| Chrysolina graminis: shiny (image from Wikimedia Commons) |
Here are some of my favourite finds:
1. The tansy beetle's Latin name is Chrysolina graminis, which means that - generically - it is a 'gold thread' beetle and, specifically, it is a grassy or herby beetle.
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| Whoever heard of a herby beetle? |
2. In the move away from outdated modes of fossil-fuelled transport, these herby beetles can lead the way VW (very well), for although they have fully formed, functioning wings, tansy beetles eschew the opportunity to fly, and simply walk everywhere instead. (OK, young ones sometimes fly, but only in hot weather). Learn more by reading the recent study by Geoff Oxford and colleagues from the Department of Biology at the University of York, which you can access here.
3. If you meet a tansy beetle now, in early July, it is VERY OLD, as the new generation don't emerge from the ground (where they have been pupating) until late July or early August. Those seen in the early summer are the previous year's adults, who have wintered underground. Again, I refer you to the study by Geoff Oxford et al.
4. They may not be frequent flyers, but if they really put their mind to it, tansy beetles can walk almost ten metres* in a fortnight. This might explain (at least partly) why they have such a limited distribution.
*The median value was 9.8 metres, according to - wait for it! - the paper by Geoff Oxford and friends.
5. The Tansy Beetle Action Group has a wonderful acronym.
6. I can't find any fossil examples of Chrysolina graminis, but I did find mention of both Chrysolina beetles and tansy plants being found in mid-late Pleistocene (~120,000 year-old) deposits in Whittlesey, Cambridgeshire (Langford et al. 2014): and Chrysolina and tansy also being preserved in Siberian ground squirrel burrows (Zanina et al. 2011)!
7. Tansy plants, the favourite (but not only) food of the beetle, are also known as bitter buttons, and have bitter-tasting leaves, which - according to the Wildlife Trusts - were eaten in spring pancakes to kill off intestinal worms.
I searched for 'worm pancake' and found this. Sorry.
8. Tansy was apparently grown in the herb gardens of Charlemagne, which means that pioneering York natural hystorian, Alcuin, could have taken a pocketful of beetles as a gift when he was snapped up by the French giant on a big-money 8th Century transfer.
9. Finally, and very importantly, if - as Wikipedia claims - tansy is 'highly toxic to arthropods' how does the tansy beetle eat it?
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| Yum! |
You can look forward to all these facts and more being incorporated into the York Trailblazers sculpture trail in 2024.
Learn more about York's ancient, natural and scientific history, by booking onto one of our York's Hidden History walks via Tripadvisor.
Find out about the Streetlife project by visiting the hub at 29-31 Coney Street, York.
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