Archips podana

Archips podana, known as the large fruit-tree tortrix, is a moth of the family Tortricidae. The Italian naturalist Giovanni Antonio Scopoli described it in 1763 in his Entomologia Carniolica. Its range covers Europe and Asia from Anatolia to Japan, and it has been introduced to North America. The wingspan is 18 to 26 millimetres and the thorax is crested. The male has a dark red-brown central band and a dark red-brown spot near the base of the forewing, the female is more brownish with a fainter band, and the hindwings are grey with a broadly orange tip. In western Europe the adults fly in a single generation from May to September, are active in the late afternoon and come to light. The female lays batches of 50 to 100 eggs on the upper side of a leaf, covered with a waxy coating that matches the leaf colour, and they hatch after 17 to 23 days. The green larvae are polyphagous and feed on trees and shrubs such as apple, pear, cherry, plum and sometimes conifers, spinning leaves together for shelter, overwintering in a silken hibernaculum on a twig and pupating in their larval shelter.