Above black-brown with dark discocellular spot and grey-brown fringes; in the male the upperside dusted with metallic blue-green, with the exception of a very broad marginal area, which remains black.

— Specimens from East Russia (Kasan) are smaller, with narrower border, above more greenish and beneath with a very feebly developed reddish yellow band; this is septentrionalis Krulik.

The larva emerges early in the spring and feeds in the stalks and buds; full-grown pale olive-green, covered with short, whitish silky hair, on the sides three stripes darker than the ground and on the back a stripe yet darker than these; the lower side-stripes are so arranged that the lowest of one segment is a continuation of the next higher of the preceding segments; the sides reddish at the stigmata, white at the outer edge.

Pupa pale olive-green with dark dorsal stripe, the wing-cases very transparent, bearing a minute reddish network and small thin white hairs; fastened low down at the stalks of Geranium (Mc Dunnough).

Also this species is met with only in single specimens among the crowds of Alpine Blues drinking at puddles, and generally only at a considerable altitude (Stilfser Joch, Zermatt, Simplon, Maloya, etc.)