red beetle | i n s e c t i n s i d e

Warwick Gardens is looking rather green and blue at the moment. The green alkanet has taken over the whole of the garden side of the park and is ablaze with blue flowers, though if you look closely you will see they are bejewelled with colourful ladybirds. But up by the log circle you can see flashes of bright red – the cardinal beetles have arrived.

Black-headed cardinal beetle Pyrochora coccinea

There are three species of cardinal beetle in the UK – the red-headed, black-headed and scarce cardinal. The most common is the red-headed cardinal beetle. We are lucky to have the rarer black-headed variety in Peckham! They are striking looking beetles about 20mm in length, with bright red wing casings, shiny black head and long, black, toothed antennae. They are usually found on flowers at the edges of woodlands and parks, and the black-headed cardinal is an indicator species for ancient woodland. Maybe their reason for settling in Warwick Gardens is a throwback to when the Great North Wood stretched to Camberwell. As predators they feed on other insects flying around the flowers on which they are perched. At the moment our beetles are scuttling up and over the logs looking for somewhere to lay their eggs. The larvae will live under loose bark or within rotting wood where they feast on the larvae of other insects.

Cardinal beetles are often mistaken for red lily beetles – the gardeners’ nemesis. These beetles are much smaller, with red dimpled wing casings, and have been seen in Warwick Gardens. Please familiarise yourself with these as I don’t want our cardinal beetles squashed!

Update 6th May

Oops! That last sentence just rang true! The problem comes when your preferred habitat happens to be a children’s adventure playground. I am taking a magnanimous view of this squashed cardinal beetle I found on the logs as I think it lost its life under a foot as children do like to run over the logs. I hope the beetle managed to mate and lay eggs before the demise… at least there are another three beetles running around.