Doing a Salamander

The salamander was the emblem of the French kings and is particularly associated with François I. The salamander's position as royal insignia comes about because of its reputation of being able to survive unscathed from the fire.

 The background to this seems to be that salamanders, which are native to the Loire Valley, François' stronghold, live in cool, dark, damp places like firewood piles. Inevitably from time to time they came in on a log and were put on the fire. Naturally they scarpered pretty nippily once in proximity with the flames -- surviving unscathed.

Yesterday we had a bonfire in the orchard to get rid of a pile of prunings. At one stage I noticed a small movement at my feet and to my surprise a longhorn beetle was staggering away from the fire. It didn't look very well, so I think it was suffering from smoke inhalation and general roasting.

I picked it up and sat it on the box of matches to take some photos of it. After I had finished it determinedly chugged off into the undergrowth.

Once I got home I used the photos to identify it. There was no difficulty in that -- it is Cerambyx scopoli, the quite common lookalike little cousin of the rarest and most iconic of the French longhorn beetles C. cerdo, The Great Capricorn (France's biggest beetle at 55mm long).

I was surprised to see an adult longhorn in February, but it seems that some individuals of this species do emerge very early, like this one. Mostly however, the adults are active in May and into June.

This one is a female, with much shorter antennae than a male. I thought that her antennae and legs had a dusting of ash, but in fact, they are covered in grey downy hair. Her body is 'ruggedised' (as manufacturers of field equipment like to say), very textured, and verging on irridescent. She measured about 25mm from mandibles to elytra tips.

She is no threat to timbers in buildings. Like many big longhorns, she requires dead timber in still living trees for her larvae to develop in. The species is not really common enough to be considered a commercial pest, and because dead timber tends to be removed, the population of C. scopoli is almost certainly declining.