Fourteen empty skins on the iris stems: counting dragonfly exuviae

1 August 2026 · 3 min read

I knew the pond had dragonfly larvae because I had seen them, squat brown things stalking along the bottom when I lifted the oxygenating weed in May. What I had not done until this week was go looking for what they leave behind. When a larva is ready it climbs out of the water, usually at night, grips a stem and splits down the back, and the adult pulls itself out and flies off, leaving a hollow, perfect skin called an exuvia still holding on. The skins last days or weeks if it does not rain hard.

On the 29th of July I went round the margin on my knees with a torch and a small paintbrush, checking every stem of the yellow iris, the water mint and the marsh marigold, and the back of the liner edge where it rises above the water. Fourteen skins. Eleven of them were on the iris stems, between 10 and 30 centimetres above the water, all facing upwards, some clustered three to a stem. Two were on the water mint and one, improbably, was on the handle of the net I had left leaning against the pebble beach.

They came in two clear sizes. Ten were about 2 centimetres long, slim, with the eyes close together, which matches the small red and blue darter-type dragonflies I have been watching over the pond since June. Four were larger, around 4 centimetres, chunkier, with eyes that met in a line across the top of the head: hawker-type, and I have seen a big brown hawker patrolling the garden in the evenings that is presumably one of them. I lifted each skin off with the paintbrush, laid them on a white saucer, photographed them with a ruler and put them in a matchbox.

What this tells me is that at least fourteen dragonflies completed a life cycle of one to two years in a body of water I filled from a hose and a water butt in October 2024. None were introduced. The eggs were laid by adults that found the pond in its first summer, and the larvae have been eating the tadpoles, mosquito larvae and each other ever since, out of sight. I will look again in a fortnight, since the hawkers go on emerging into August, and I will be more careful where I lean the net.