The Dark Arches (Apamea monoglypha) is a moth of the family Noctuidae. It is a common, sometimes abundant, European species. It is found in most of Europe except northernmost Fennoscandia and the southern parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Greece. The smaller subspecies sardoa is found on Sardinia and Corsica. The species is also found in Anatolia, Western Asia and central Asia. In the Alps it is found up to heights of 2,500 meters.
This is a fairly large species (wingspan 46–54 mm), the forewings varying from pale greyish brown to almost black and cryptically patterned. All but the darkest individuals usually have an obvious black mark close to the dorsum and a pale "zig-zag" subterminal line. The hindwings are whitish with darker venation and a dark shaded band at the margin. This moth flies at night from June to August with a second brood sometimes emerging in September and October . It is attracted to light, sugar and many nectar-rich flowers.
The larva is pale with a black head and black spots. It feeds on various grasses including Deschampsia, Dactylis glomerata, Lolium Calamagrostis and Festuca species (including Festuca ovina). This species overwinters as a larva.
- ^ The flight season refers to the British Isles. This may vary in other parts of the range.
Famous quotes containing the words dark and/or arches:
“Through the dark cold and the empty desolation,
The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters
Of the petrel and the porpoise. In my end is my beginning.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“No annual training or muster of soldiery, no celebration with its scarfs and banners, could import into the town a hundredth part of the annual splendor of our October. We have only to set the trees, or let them stand, and Nature will find the colored drapery,—flags of all her nations, some of whose private signals hardly the botanist can read,—while we walk under the triumphal arches of the elms.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)