Chrysoperla carnea was originally considered to be a single species with a holarctic distribution but it has now been shown to be a complex of many cryptic, sibling subspecies.

They have a pair of pincer-like mandibles on their head with which they grasp their prey, sometimes lifting the victim off the leaf surface to prevent its escape.

They have a delicate appearance and are from twelve to twenty millimetres long with large, membranous, pale green wings which they fold tent-wise above their abdomens.

[3] The green lacewing adults overwinter buried in leaf litter at the edge of fields or other rough places, emerging when the weather warms up in spring.

Each female lacewing lays several hundred small eggs at the rate of two to five per day, choosing concealed spots underneath leaves or on shoots near potential prey.

[citation needed] After two to three weeks, the mature larvae secrete silk and build round, parchment-like cocoons in concealed positions on plants.

Chrysoperla carnea adults eat pollen and honeydew and are not predatory, but the larvae have been recorded as feeding on seventy different prey species in five insect orders.

It is considered an important aphid predator in cotton crops in Russia and Egypt, sugar beet in Germany and vineyards in Europe.

Although the larvae are effective as biological control agents, in open air environments the adult lacewings tend to disperse widely.

They may remain in the original release location if they have sources of nectar, pollen or honeydew to feed on in the general vicinity.

[13] When attempts were made to introduce the species into India, and New Zealand between the 1920s and 1970s, the lacewings failed to become established, perhaps because of the absence of certain yeast symbionts necessary to their development which were absent from their new environments.