Caradrina clavipalpis

Caradrina clavipalpis, the pale mottled willow, is a moth of the family Noctuidae.

It is found in the Palearctic realm (Europe, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Kuwait, Russia, Central Asia, Mongolia, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, north-west India, and Sri Lanka).

It is an introduced species in North America, where it was first reported from Queens in New York City in 1993.

Forewing pale to dark grey with darker dusting and sometimes tinged with ochreous; the terminal area generally fuscous; the lines starting from black costal spots; the inner and outer double, blackish, the inner minutely waved, the outer dentate; subterminal line pale, waved, preceded by a grey shade with dentate rufous marks in it; stigmata small, fuscous, the orbicular rounded, the reniform a narrow lunule, with two white dots on its inner edge and three on outer; hindwing white, the veins and termen dark grey; — in laciniosa Donz.

the subterminal line consists of a row of three yellowish spots each extended to termen; — the form leucoptera Thnbg., from Scandinavia, Finland, and the Ural Mountains, has fuscous suffusion over the head, thorax, and forewing, the hindwing remaining white.

A pale mottled willow on a calabash leaf at night
Figs. 5, 5a, 5 b larva after last moult