Yellow-Spotted Emerald
(Somatochlora flavomaculata)

In our limited experience of the Yellow-Spotted Emerald it's a typical Emerald species: it will hardly ever sit still to please a curious photographer. It's essentially a Central and Eastern European species, with only a handful of scattered sites further South. We've seen this species twice in Germany and the Netherlands (and then more recently in Finland and Turkey) and on these occasions it was present in good numbers. Somatochlora flavomaculata is a medium-sized dragonfly. Its most distinguishing features include the strikingly green eyes and, more importantly, the yellow spots on the top and sides of abdominal segments 2-8.

For an overview of the Yellow-Spotted Emerald'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.

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