Japanese jewel beetle
Amazing fact
Females insert an egg-laying tube into the bark of weakened or dead trees to lay eggs.
水巻町歴史資料館
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An illustration based on the real animal.
A little discovery to share.
Females insert an egg-laying tube into the bark of weakened or dead trees to lay eggs.
THE REAL WORLD
The real Japanese jewel beetle
- Scientific name
- Chrysochroa fulgidissima
- Japanese name
- タマムシ（ヤマトタマムシ）
- Group
- Insects
- Class
- Insecta
- Order
- Coleoptera
- Family
- Buprestidae
- Genus
- Chrysochroa
The insect familiar from the Japanese color word tamamushi-iro. Adults fly about in the daytime over trees such as hackberry and zelkova.
Adults eat the leaves of trees such as zelkova. The larvae bore into dead wood and live by eating it.
The color of its wings does not change even after death. The Tamamushi Shrine, made with collected wings, is famous.
How the Japanese jewel beetle lives
Adults appear in summer on old trees such as cherry and hackberry. Adults gather on Chinese parasol trees. They surround eggs laid in cracks of stumps or logs with a resin-like material.
茨城県森林総合研究所 九州支所Basic data
- Size
- Body length: 33 mm
- Diet
- Leaves of elm family plants such as Japanese zelkova
- Range
- Honshu to Kyushu
Where the Japanese jewel beetle has been recorded
Records: GBIF.org (CC0 and CC BY 4.0 records, retrieved 2026-11-07). Map: Natural EarthSee the records on GBIF
Watch wild animals from a distance. Do not touch or feed them, and take care of the places where they live.
Names around the world
Names come from Wikidata and iNaturalist records. Where a language has no recorded name, we use the scientific name.
Sources and how we check
- 国土交通省 大隅河川国道事務所 — 肝属川の生き物 タマムシChecked: 2026-11-04
- 森林総合研究所 九州支所 — ヤマトタマムシ（タマムシ）Checked: 2026-11-07
- 茨城県 — ヤマトタマムシChecked: 2026-11-07
- 水巻町歴史資料館 — ヤマトタマムシ（タマムシ）Checked: 2026-11-07
We check each fact against its source. The illustrations simplify how the real animal looks.
The classification (class, order, family, genus) follows Wikidata records, checked against GBIF. Classifications can change as research goes on.
The basic data are the values given in each source. They vary with how the animal is measured, whether it is male or female, and whether it lives in the wild or in captivity.
This page was translated from the original Japanese with the help of AI.
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