[1][2] It flies in a variety of grassy habitats, including roadsides, woodland edges and clearings, prairies, bogs, and arctic and alpine taiga and tundra.

Upperside sandy yellow, similar to Coenonympha symphita, rather duller; male without markings, female with the ocelli shining through.

On the underside of the hindwing whitish smears are joined forming a more or less incomplete median band, beyond which there are some ocelli in the male and often a complete row in the female.

(48 h) is a rather large northern form, dulled with grey above and strongly ocellated below, from the continental shores of the North Sea and Great Britain, (said to have occurred also at Lemberg).

is a slight deviation from the type, which is a little paler ochre-yellow on the upperside; it is probably found every-where exceptionally among the nymotypical form.

— subcaecata Ruhl, from the higher Altai, is an intermediate form, closely allied to ochracea from Colorado; it is darker and larger than caeca, but paler than isis; single specimens show vestiges of ocelli.

[now Coenonympha rhodopensis Elwes, 1900 ] a form from the Danubian countries, closely allied to isis, but yellowish brown on the upperside and rarely darker in the male.Of the ocelli on the underside only the pupil of the apical one and sometimes of one of the eyes on the hindwing shines through above.

— Larva pale green, covered with minute dot-like warts, with a globular green head and yellow mouth, dark light-edged dorsal line, whitish subdorsal lines and pale yellow lateral stripe; anal claspers and anal fork rosy red.

Sometimes quite fresh specimens are found in places where no single individual had been met with before in spite of decades of ardent collecting, and from where the species again disappeared for a long time.