Forewing pale ash grey, faintly dusted with dark, with a slight ochreous tinge, always darker in the female, tinged with pale red brown; inner and outer lines yellowish, the inner nearly straight, slightly bent inwards on subcostal vein and vein 1; the outer sinuous, approaching inner line on inner margin; orbicular a brown dot; reniform a brownish lunule; both lines followed by a brownish shade, the inner below middle only, the outer throughout; subterminal line twice indented, with a large rounded projection above each indentation; terminal area darker; a row of black terminal dots; hindwing pale brownish, with a faint curved pale median line before a fuscous brown submarginal border; this species varies in coloration; the ab.

inconspicua nov. from Lambessa, N.Africa, is a smaller form, generally with slight and inconspicuous markings, dull grey in the male and somewhat pink-tinged in the female.

[3] The lunar double-stripe is found in Central and Southern Europe, North Africa, Asia Minor and Kazakhstan.

Frequent records from Sussex in the 1870s suggest it was once resident there and from 1947 moths, ova and larvae were regularly found in Orlestone Wood, Kent amongst oak coppice.

Numbers declined from 1953 and the last record was in 1958; temporary residence is attributed to wartime coppicing and the consequent abundance of oak stools and fresh foliage.