Subject: Black beetle
Location: SW France, (Gers County)
May 25, 2015 7:04 am
I’m hoping that you may have seen this beetle in the USA as I’m living in SW France at the moment (not far from the Pyrénées). I’m a great bug fan and usually try to get pictures when they stay put long enough. This one did let me go and get my camera before taking off in the long grass.
Really a splendid specimen, in my opinion – but what is it?
Thank you for your help.
Signature: Suzy Stewart Dubot
Dear Suzy,
The first matching image we located of your Longicorn in the family Cerambycidae was on FlickR where it is identified as Lamia textor. We learned on the site http://www.cerambyx.uochb.cz/lamia.htm that it “prefers willows (Salix) (rarely in Populus, Betula, Alnus)” as host plants and that it is distributed in “Europe, Russia.” Though we prefer not to cite from Wikipedia, it is the only place we could find a common name: Weaver Beetle.
