Flammona Walker

Type species: quadrifasciata Walker, Borneo.

Flammona contains three species that share the very distinctive, banded, pink, grey and black forewing facies described below. The forewings have the apex somewhat produced. The hindwings are a paler grey, with a diffusely darker pinkish-grey border. The build is delicate, and the abdomen extends well beyond the hindwings in a spread insect. The labial palps are short, directed forwards. The male antennae are filiform, with a slight, irregularly swollen appearance. The abdomen lacks phragma lobes on the second segment, and the apodemes of the basal sternite are well separated, arising from triangular bases and directed slightly in towards each other.

The male abdomen of the type species has a large single corema on the eighth sternite that is set in a deep pocket. The genitalia have a slender, curved, tapering uncus. The tegumen has external structures like peniculi: dorsally inclined lobes. There is a strong saccus. The valves are long, narrow, expanding gently to a paddle-like apex that bears dorsally directed setae. There is a small triangular process from the interior of the sacculus at about one-third on the valve. The aedeagus vesica lacks ornament.

The female genitalia have a broad ostium associated with the interior margin of the eighth segment; this segment has apodemes that are almost twice its length. The ostium forms a slight pocket or antrum before narrowing to a very short section of the ductus bursae before an equally short but slightly corrugated and sclerotised basal section of the corpus bursae. The ductus seminalis arises just beyond this in the rest of the corpus bursae, an elongate pyriform that has two moderate scobinate patches on each side of its broadest part.

There are no clear pointers to the relationship of this genus. The occurrence of a single corema on the eighth sternite is rare but scattered in the broadly defined concept of the Noctuidae (Holloway, 2008: 22). Orchid-feeding is also rare, shared only with the morphologically quite different “Urbona”  chlorocrota Hampson, currently in the Nolidae (Holloway, 2003: 183). The male eighth abdominal segment in chlorocrota is reduced, flimsy, without ornament.

As well as the type species, the genus contains F. trilineata Leech (China) and F. curvifascia Warren (Sumatra).