It also occurs in North America (Labrador to Virginia, west across Canada, south to Minnesota).

Forewing dull lilac grey, flushed with fawn colour, especially in median area; a black, semibifid streak from base below cell; lines brownish, double, indistinct; the median shade dark grey or fawn colour, diffuse and prominent; orbicular stigma pale, black-edged; reniform large with grey centre, blackish in lower lobe, with pale annulus and black outline; claviform small, with dark outline; submarginal line dull, with darker shades in places on each side; hindwing greyish fuscous, paler towards base; — in basistriga Stgr.

the ground colour is bluish grey except the median area, and the black basal streak is stronger; this form is recorded from western Turkestan, eastern Siberia, Japan, and China, also from Norway; a small series from Pescocostanzo, Italy, seems referable here; — ab.

The larva feeds on various grasses, including oats, fescues, barleys, canarygrasses, timothy, ryes, wheats, and wild rice.

it is grey brown with black tubercles; dorsal line broad, whitish; subdorsal finer; spiracular line broadly whitish, edged above with dark; feeding when quite young in autumn in the grains of corn and after hibernation in the fresh lower leaves and on grasses.