| Common Crane Fly (Tipula oleracea (Linnaeus, 1758)) |
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Scientific name: Tipula oleracea (Linnaeus, 1758) Common name: Common Crane Fly French name: Tipule du chou, Tipule potagère Order: Diptera Family: Tipulidae Wingspan : Wingspan: 34 to 48 mm, very long legs. Biotope: Meadows, gardens. Geographic area: Europe, mainly in the northern regions. Introduced to North America. Observation period : April to October in two broods per year. |
Tipulidae, also called Crane Flies, are remarkable by their very long and fragile legs which can easily detach from the body. You can recognize the members of the Tipulidae family by the V-shape suture of the mesonotum, on the upper side of the thorax between the base of the wings, by their long snout and by they wing veins with two anal veins reaching the edge of the wing. The Crane flies of the Tipula genus are characterized by the sub-costal vein joining the radial vein (Tipulinae family), by the presence of a discal cell, by long legs and by thread-like antennae with 13 articles. There are 132 species of the Tipula genus in France, that's to say that it is very difficult to tell species apart. The Marsh Crane Fly (Tipula paludosa) is very similar. It has only one brood per year, emerging in June. The two first antennal articles are yellowish, Tipula oleracea has a least the three first antennal articles which are yellowish. The Common Crane Fly has a greyish brown body. The females' abdomen bear a pointed ovipositor. The lengthy wings show three longitudinal bands. The first one, on the costal edge, is a dark colour. It is next to a band with a vitreous or milky white colour. The third band is paler than the first one. When resting, the wings are not held aligned above the body but are held open. Female Tipula paludosa 's abdomen is longer than the wings. This is the opposite on Tipula oleracea. The wings of Tipula paludosa are thinner. Larvae, living on the ground, look like small greyish worms. They can cause important damages by attacking the base of plants. |
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You can clearly see, on the wings, one milky white longitudinal band between a thin dark costal band and a paler greyish band. The wings seem to be slightly shorter than the abdomen. However this is not true as they are not in the same plane. See the next picture. |
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The wings seem even shorter on this side-view picture but you can see that they are lifted up over the abdomen. Here is one example showing how it is easy to get erroneous conclusions with only one picture. The two pictures together allow to estimate the wing length to about the abdomen length. So this one is rather Tipula oleracea and not Tipula paludosa. |
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The identification of the Tipula oleracea species is confirmed by the fact that the 3 first articles of the antennae are an orange colour. |
André Bon October 2017