roman snail? ID please?

[lipase]

I recently found a number of snails. I think most of them are the edible species Helix aspersa (although this is also a bit of a guess). But two smaller ones appeared more 'plain' in terms of patterns on their shells and I thought they could be the protected species Helix pomatia or roman snail. If so I don't want to go about eating them if they are a protected species...

Here's a couple of photos of 2 of the larger ones that I suspected were Helix aspersa:



Any insight is much appreciated!

Jack

[The Woodman]

The smaller snails aren't H.pomatia, they are usually bigger than H.aspersa and the Peak District is also well north of their range.

They might be a bandless variety of the Orchard snail Arianta arbustorum but don't take my word for it, wait for other opinion.

[lipase]

Ah right that's interesting to know! Thanks Woodman. Just one other question; do you know approximately how many species of snail live wild in Britain? I keep on 'finding out' that there's far more species of everything than I expect (for example the incredible number of species of moss!)

Jack

[aeshna5]

I think there's c120 UK species of snail/slug + as with many species quite a few introduced species (including long established Garden + Roman Snails).