Rhagium mordax - Longhorn Beetle

Uncommon, but throughout Britain in well established native woodland.

Insects generally have a bad press, amongst other 'crimes' they are blamed for spreading disease, damaging crops, eating your roses and spoiling picnics! With the exception of Butterflies they are either universally hated or, perhaps worse still, simply ignored. We have discovered and named almost every bird and mammal, but we cannot even accurately estimate how many different species of insects there are on earth.

In the past conservation tended to concentrate on a few 'glamorous' species, usually birds, mammals and flowering plants, and tended to forget about the myriad other small, and less appealing, organisms. As a result many insects are seriously threatened, including Longhorn Beetles. Found in mature broad-leaved woodland they spend most of their life as larvae in dead wood. Native woodland is rare enough in Britain, but in many places dead trees are routinely felled and removed, both for public safety and to 'tidy' up the woodland. All to the detriment of the poor Longhorn Beetle who, if you just left the trees in place, would eventually eat them for you!

Climbing Corydalis

This plant is fairly common within Carstramon Wood, though it can be hard to spot amongst the dense Bracken (Click on the photo and see if you can find it). It is the sole host for a rare weevil (Procas granulicollis), only found within Britain, which was previously thought to be extinct. In 1996 an insect survey found it, alive and well, living on Climbing Corydalis in Carstramon Wood!

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