A Year in the Valley

A Year in the Valley

Discovering the flora and fauna in a small square of Portmellon Valley

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  • Snail Special

    Snail Special

    This is a Lipped Snail.  These can be white-lipped or brown-lipped depending on the colour of the rim of the shell.  It’s impossible to tell with the stripy one unless I manage to find it again and look specifically, as they come in many different colourways and it’s only the lip that defines which sort it is.   Since I took this photo, I have seen both white-lipped and brown-lipped snails.

    The white-lipped snail is usually yellow, but may be pink, brown, or red with up to five dark bands and nearly always has an obvious white lip.  White-lipped snails live in damp vegetation.  Their favourite foodstuffs are nettles, ragwort, and hogweed.

    The brown-lipped snail typically has a stripy shell again with up to five bands, yellow through dark brown with pink or orange possible.  Brown-lipped snails like a variety of habitats, but preferably damp.  They are easier to spot in wet weather as they climb plants and trees then.  They eat nettles and buttercups, but usually prefer dead or decaying foliage to fresh. 

    This is the Brown Garden Snail (Cornu aspersum, previously known as Helix aspersa).  It is larger than the lipped snails with a thick shell, matt and rough in texture.  It has dark spiral bands alternating with yellow-ish broken bands, giving quite a distinctive tweedy look.  It is mainly nocturnal and omnivorous, preferring to eat plant matter, but occasionally eating worms, other snails, and dead animal matter.  I found this quite surprising.  And In spite of their diet, they are edible. 

    Daisy D

    14 August 2023
    Molluscs
    Brown Garden Snail, Brown-lipped Snail, White-lipped Snail

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