Garden banded snail
The white-lipped snail or garden banded snail, scientific name Cepaea hortensis, is a medium-sized species of air-breathing land snail, a terrestrial pulmonate gastropod mollusc in the family Helicidae. It is a close relative of the Grove Snail.
The white-lipped snail is very slightly smaller than the grove snail, the shell being usually about 2.5 cm (1 in) in maximum dimension. Like the grove snail (brown-lipped snail), it has considerable variability in shell colour and banding, although the shell of the white-lipped snail is perhaps most commonly yellow, with or without brown banding. The principal distinguishing feature of this species is a white lip at the aperture of the shell in adult specimens, although very rarely the brown-lipped grove snail can have a white lip, and vice versa.
The native distribution of this species is Western Europe and Central Europe. The range of the white-lipped snail extends closer to the Arctic in Northern Europe than the range of the grove snail. The white-lipped snail has been introduced to northeastern parts of the USA, but has not established itself as successfully as the brown-lipped snail.
The two species share many of the same habitats, such as woods, dunes and grassland, but the white-lipped snail tolerates wetter and colder areas than the brown-lipped snail can.
This species of snail creates and uses love darts during mating.
The size of the egg is 2 mm.
