It seems to inhabit the margins of native forest and also frequents plains, with an affinity for gorse hedges.

There has been a contraction of range of A. obarata with it now being regarded as locally extinct in both Dunedin and Invercargill.

This species was first described by Cajetan Felder and Alois Friedrich Rogenhofer in 1875 as Cidaria obarata.

[5] The female holotype specimen was collected by Thomas R. Oxley in Nelson and is held at the Natural History Museum in London.

The fore-wings are pale greyish-ochreous; there is an interrupted reddish-brown transverse band near the base; two faint, interrupted shaded blackish hues, one at about one-third and the other at about two-thirds, enclosing between them a large central area, which contains a very distinct black dot above the middle, and several irregular shaded black marks; beyond this there is a wavy reddish-brown band; the apex of the wing is somewhat projecting, and the termen is considerably bowed.