The hemelytra vary from greyish to brick-red (some sources say the males are grey, females red[3]) and are somewhat translucent with the veins showing up as whitish.

[5] The species was first described, as Thamnotettix lauri, by Géza Horváth in 1897 from specimens taken in Fiume (Rijeka) and Buccari (Bakar) on the Adriatic coast of what is now Croatia.

[4] Nearly 30 years later, Hermann Haupt independently described a single male taken in Gravosa (Gruž), some 260 miles (420 km) further southeast.

Throughout much of the 20th century it was regarded as a pontomediterranean species, i.e. inhabiting the area between the Black Sea (ho pontos to the ancient Greeks) and the Mediterranean.

[3] In 2008–09 it was discovered in Hamburg and Öhringen, two widely separated locations in Germany,[6] and also at Liège in Belgium.