See also Viper's Bugloss

Viper's Bugloss

Echium vulgare is a species of Echium native to most of Europe, and western and central Asia. It is also common in North America....

 for the plant.

The Viper's Bugloss (Hadena irregularis) is a species of moth

Moth

A moth is an insect closely related to the butterfly, both being of the order Lepidoptera. Moths form the majority of this order; there are thought to be 150,000 to 250,000 different species of moth , with thousands of species yet to be described...

 of the family Noctuidae

Noctuidae

The Noctuidae or owlet moths are a family of robustly-built moths that includes more than 35,000 known species out of possibly 100,000 total, in more than 4,200 genera. They constitute the largest family in the Lepidoptera....

. It is found in Europe

Europe

Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

.

The wingspan

Wingspan

The wingspan of an airplane or a bird, is the distance from one wingtip to the other wingtip. For example, the Boeing 777 has a wingspan of about ; and a Wandering Albatross caught in 1965 had a wingspan of , the official record for a living bird.The term wingspan, more technically extent, is...

 is 32–36 mm. The moth flies from July to August depending on the location.

The larvae feed on Silene otites and Gypsophila

Gypsophila

Gypsophila —commonly known as baby's-breath in the United States and Canada, "soap wort" in the United Kingdom, elsewhere Gypsophila—is a genus of about 100 species of flowering plants in the family Caryophyllaceae, native to Europe, Asia and north Africa. Many species are found on calcium-rich...

species.

In 1998 the United Kingdom government removed Hadena irregularis from schedule 5 (animals) of the The Wildlife and Countryside Act, 1981 as it is believed to be extinct. The cause of extinction has been hypothesised to be destruction of habitat, primarily the food source, which in the United Kingdom was limited to Spanish catch-fly (Silene otites).

External links

• Viper's Bugloss at UKmoths
• The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981 at JNCC