Alan Davidson

Venus Shell (a generic name)

Callista chione (Linnaeus)

Appears in
top 1000North Atlantic Seafood
North Atlantic Seafood

By Alan Davidson

Published 1980

  • About

Family Veneridae

  • Portuguese: Concha fina
  • Spanish: Saverina
  • French: Verni

REMARKS Maximum length 9 cm, but 7 cm is more usual. The shell is reddish brown or pinkish brown in colour, with rays of a deeper hue. The exterior has a highly distinctive sheen, almost as though it had been varnished, which accounts for the French name, and the English ‘brown venus’.

The range of the species is from the southern parts of Britain down to the Mediterranean.
Lovell remarked that this was not a common bivalve, but that specimens had been taken in Hayle, Cornwall, where the fishermen called them cocks, and that they were fairly abundant at the mouth of the River Helford, where the name was cram.