New Millipede for Worcestershire

By John Meiklejohn

Whilst scrabbling through leaf litter looking for the Land Caddis on the steep slopes of the woodland in Old Storridge opposite the Knapp and Papermill reserve with Harry Green, I kept finding a millipede, like a smaller snake millipede, that at first I took little notice of. Eventually it dawned on me that it was quite different from the species I am fairly familiar with in the south of the county.

The striking feature was the very swollen, bulbous appearance of the ‘cheeks’. It is one of the two species of the genus Chordeuma, in all probability from its distribution, C. proximum. I need to find an adult male to confirm its identity , but the other species C. sylvestre has only been recorded from the Cornwall/Devon boundary. The females cannot be separated.

C. proximum has been recorded from The Forest of Dean, a few areas in Wales and in the Surrey area.

References

BLOWER, JG 1985 Millipedes Synopses of the British Fauna No. 35. Linnean Society of London

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