Ectoedemia turbidella

Wingspan about 6 or 7 mm. The adult moths are greyish in ground colour with creamy white forewing patches with an orange or yellowish head tuft and whitish eyecaps, but the species cannot be reliably identified as adults by external characteristics alone. It is more likely to be recorded from the larval mines on the leaves of Grey Poplar (Populus x canescens). The mine starts as a gall in the petiole, where the egg is laid, the larva then feeds outwards into the leaf itself, forming a roughly triangular blotch at the base of the leaf, usually with two diverging areas of frass in a 'V' shape. There are usually two larvae mining a leaf, one on each side of the petiole.

Adult  Leafmine Adult: A photo is required and gen det may be necessary unless raised from a leafmine on Grey Poplar. Leafmine: Please provide photographs showing the mine as a backlit image and one showing the whole leaf. Please also state the host plant when submitting a record.

Adult: A photo is required and gen det may be necessary unless raised from a leafmine on Grey Poplar.

Leafmine: Please provide photographs showing the mine as a backlit image and one showing the whole leaf. Please also state the host plant when submitting a record.

Areas where Grey Poplar occurs.

Adults fly in May and June.  The mines can be found in fallen leaves in October.

A very local species, but often common where it occurs. In the Butterfly Conservation's Microlepidoptera Report 2011 this species was classified RDB3.

Rarely recorded in Leicestershire and Rutland.

http://www.leafmines.co.uk/html/Lepidoptera/E.turbidella.htm

https://bladmineerders.nl/parasites/animalia/arthropoda/insecta/lepidoptera/monotrysia/nepticuloidea/nepticulidae/ectoedemia/ectoedemia-turbidella/