The noble chafer (Gnorimus nobilis) is a green beetle with a metallic sheen. It spends much of its life as a grub, living in the rotting wood of aging fruit trees. It reaches adulthood in its second summer, and crawls out to breed and feed on flowers such as common hogweed, before dying in the early autumn. The adult tends to be found high up in the trees, in old pruned wood or woodpecker holes.
So little is known about the noble chafer that conservationists are unsure exactly how many are left. Noble chafers are most often seen on sunny days between July and August. The beetle has been losing its habitat, and its populations shrinking, for more than a century. The beetle has been recently seen at a handful of sites in the old English fruit-growing regions of Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Worcestershire.
Famous quotes containing the word noble:
“To read well, that is, to read true books in a true spirit, is a noble exercise, and one that will task the reader more than any exercise which the customs of the day esteem. It requires a training such as the athletes underwent, the steady intention almost of the whole life to this object.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)