Bladetail
(Lindenia tetraphylla)

The Bladetail is Europe's largest gomphid. It's also our photographic pride and joy and we're very pleased to have contributed some insights into its distribution in Central Italy. Lindenia tetraphylla is a large but slender and elegant dragonfly. It's a positively rare species with only a few scattered sites in Greece, the Balkans and Italy. Its most distinguishing features (besides the separated eyes so typical of any European gomphid) include its sandy grey base colour with black markings, the orange band between the female's S1 and S2, and the four blades underneath S7-S8 which give the species its scientific and common names.

For an overview of the Bladetail's distribution in Europe, hover your mouse pointer over the map symbol .
With the authors' permission we have based this map on data published in Kalkman et al. (2010).
Legend: Red = Occurs, White = Doesn't occur; Purple = Extinct; Yellow = Vagrant.

Hover your mouse pointer over a thumbnail below to display a larger version of it. Or click on a thumbnail to display the photograph (at 1050 x 700 pixels) in a new window. And then, if you'd like to get even closer, you can drag the ZoomBox from the top-left corner of that window across the photograph. Note that you may have to refresh the window manually (by pressing F5 on your keyboard) for the ZoomBox to display correctly.