Subspecies include:[1][2] This species can be found in most of Europe, except Britain Isles and northern Scandinavia.

[4] The caterpillar is light green with a series of triangular black spots on the sides of the body.

It is hardly possible to give a general description of the colour and pattern of the 20 odd forms which are being united under this species.

The antenna is strong, being enlarged to a stout club; collar and edge of thorax mostly with whitish hairs; legs black-blue, yellow beneath.

Forewing metallic black-green, densely scaled, fringes light reddish yellow; 6 spots, the 6 halfmoon-shaped, parallel with the distal margin, its normal colour in exceptional specimens absent, but then always recognizable by the scaling having a different gloss.

The species is distributed throughout Central and South Europe, as well as North Africa and Western Asia, extending to Turkestan and the Altai.

"To enumerate all transitions and aberrations would fatigue even the most patient," says Ochsenheimer; we also shall therefore only characterize the forms which alone till now have received names.

grossi Hirshke [ now junior synonym of Z.carniolica Scopoli, 1763] the red is replaced by coffee-brown.

hedysari Hübner, 1796] (8e) has no red abdominal belt: the commonest form in Germany, but locally predominating also in Italy and other countries.

[ now junior synonym of depicting a few subspecies]] Z. carniolica Scopoli, 1763] the spots of the forewing are confluent in pairs; Liguria.— In ab.

— In the Tring Museum there is an aberration with entirely red wings, which may be named totirubra ab.

[now junior synonym of Zygaena carniolica Scopoli, 1763 ] (8ef), from Hungary and Lower Austria, the whitish edges of the spots of the forewing are so enlarged that the white almost entirely displaces the dark ground-colour, the hindwing being sometimes pale pink, as in the third specimen figured as (amoena on 8f.)

berolinensis Lederer, 1853 ] (8g), occurring singly everywhere among the normal form, but being especially typical at the Italian Riviera, the white margins of the spots of the forewing are completely absent and the abdomen is without belt.

graeca Staudinger, 1870] resembles a small carniolica of the name-typical form, and has like this insect a red belt, but the whitish yellow edges of the spots of the forewing are much thinner; from Greece.amasina Stgr.

wiedemannii Ménétriés, 1839 ] (8h), from Anterior Asia, on the contrary has so much white on the forewing that this is the prevalent colour: moreover, the abdomen is vermilion except the base and tip.— albarracina Stgr.

albarracina Staudinger, 1887, from Andalusia, is a small form which approaches orana, but has less red on the abdomen.In transiens Stgr.

transiens Staudinger, 1887 ] the spot 6 which is edged with white in the previous forms, has become all white, the red centre disappearing, this form therefore approaching the occitanica group, which one has several times endeavoured to distinguish specifically from the carniolica-forms from Western Asia.