Monster Molluscs You Could See in the Touraine Loire Valley

The Touraine Loire Valley is home to some impressively large land snails and slugs.

This Yellow Cellar Slug Limacus flavus (Fr. Limace des caves) and its family live in our kitchen. They are nocturnal, so we rarely see them. For scale, the tiles are 20 cm².

I encounter Ash-black Slugs Limax cinereoniger (Fr. Grande limace) in the larger well established forests. They can be pale and stripey like this one...

 ...or they can be charcoal grey with a pale grey dorsal ridge.

Red Slugs Arion rufus (Fr. Grande loche) can be encountered anywhere -- in the forest, on waste ground, in gardens and often on roads, paths and tracks.

The famous edible Roman/Burgundian Snail Helix pomatia (Fr. Escargot de Bourgogne) occurs in isolated small populations on sites that don't get much human disturbance or are managed with a light touch. They like semi-natural parks or woodland edges. A significant number are white...

 

...but most are brown.

A Turkish Snail Helix lucorum (Fr. Escargot turc) with a friend's hand for scale. Under the hand is a Glow-worm Lampyria noctiluca (Fr. Lampyre) larva. They prey on snails by injecting them with toxin then waiting for them to die, so this snail may already be doomed.