A dark little butterfly that spends the majority of its life in the tree tops, feeding on honeydew, making it best observed through binoculars.

— sutschani Tutt [now subspecies] resembles the nymotypical form, but the underside is paler grey and is variegated with small white spots at the red band ; from Sutchan.

[now subspecies] is coloured above like European specimens, but agrees with spini in size, and the submarginal spots of the hindwing beneath are orange instead of red; North Island of Japan (Hokkaido).

[1] The insect has a widely disjunct distribution across the Northern Hemisphere; it is found throughout much of Europe, from Wales to the Urals, southern Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, and again in Siberia, the Russian Far East, Korea, and Japan.

It is widely but patchily distributed across most of England; the butterfly is absent from Ireland, western Wales and most of Cornwall.

[3] The spread of second, far more lethal, strain of Dutch elm disease in the 1970s inevitably had a major impact on the British population, but it has since recovered well in places and is still increasing its range.

Under normal circumstances, where sexually-mature trees occur, it immediately feeds on the flowers, later the seeds, before progressing to the emergent leaves in April.

However, research in the Low Countries has shown that the larvae are remarkably adept at using non-flowering suckers; provided they are able to hydrate on emergence, they can survive dormant for up to six weeks, until the leaves flush.

The butterflies occasionally fly down from the canopies to nectar from flowers when honeydew is unavailable, notably after heavy rains have washed it from the leaves.