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Sticker of Mint leaf beetle
Bug card No. 0929 of 1,500

Mint leaf beetle

Chrysolina herbacea
Eats: PlantsBeetlesGardens and meadows6 legs

The mint leaf beetle shines like a little green jewel. Some of them glow gold, purple or even deep blue. It loves mint plants so much that it lives on them and munches their leaves.

Lives in
Europe and western Asia, as far as North India, in damp meadows, by rivers and in gardens
Length
0.8 to 1 cm (0.31 to 0.39 in)
Top speed
about 0.41 km/h (0.25 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless
Harmless. It cannot bite or sting you, so you can look at it shining on the mint.
What does it eat?
It eats the leaves of mint and plants from the mint family. Its black larvae munch on mint leaves too.
For real!Photo of Mint leaf beetle
Picture by pjt56. CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Mint leaf beetle about 1 cm long (0.39 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
small enough to sit on your fingernailas long as 1.5 grains of rice in a rowcould run across a dinner table in 8.8 seconds

How big is Mint leaf beetle compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

It has proper working wings, but it hardly ever bothers to fly.

2

Its babies are black larvae that live on the mint plant, just like their parents.

3

The larvae sleep through the winter, wake up in spring for a quick snack, and then turn into beetles in the soil.

4

A grown-up mint leaf beetle lives a long time and can survive two winters.

you asked

Most asked questions about Mint leaf beetle

?What does the mint leaf beetle eat?

It eats mint leaves and leaves of other plants in the mint family. Its larvae eat mint too.

?Is the mint leaf beetle dangerous?

No. It is a harmless little beetle that does not bite or sting.

?How big is a mint leaf beetle?

It is about 8 to 10 millimetres long, about as long as a fingernail.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Chrysolina herbacea
Group
Beetles
Family
Chrysomelidae
Classification
Insecta > Coleoptera > Chrysomelidae
Lives on
Europe, Asia
Also known as
Green mint beetle

Where the facts come from

  1. Chrysolina herbacea (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by pjt56. CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons. The round sticker of this bug is cut from the same picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at hello@bugwiki.app and we will fix it.

More from the same group: Beetles

Also at home here: Gardens and meadows