The caterpillar feeds, in May and June, on oak, elm, etc., and also upon low-growing plants. It is reddish brown above, and greenish beneath, sometimes the upper surface is tinged with green also; the back is freckled with pale brown, and the three lines along it are faintly paler, the raised dots are whitish; head, glossy pale brown, freckled with reddish-brown, and lined with darker brown.
The moth occurs at sugar, ivy bloom, etc., in the autumn and early winter, also at sallow catkins in the spring, in probably almost all wooded localities throughout the British Isles.
Its range abroad extends to Japan.
The Dark Chestnut (Orrhodia (Conistra) ligula).
Four examples of this species are shown on Plate [11]. The typical form has a white band on the outer area of the fore wings (Fig. 7); sometimes this band is ochreous (ab. subnigra, Haworth), and a modification of this, in which the outlines of the stigmata and the veins are pale, is var. ochrea, Tutt. Ab. polita, Hübner (Fig. 9), has a whitish-grey submarginal band and greyish cross lines, and ab. spadicea, Haworth (Fig. 10), is a dark form without any distinct markings. This species has long been incorrectly known as spadicea, Hübner, which, as noted above, is a form of vaccinii, L. Staudinger, probably to prevent confusion, deposed spadicea, Haworth, and set up subspadicea in its place.
Fig. 8 represents a specimen from North Kent that somewhat suggests ab. suffusa, Tutt, of the previous species. On comparing the outer marginal contour of the fore wings of these closely allied species, it will be noted that in all forms of ligula the margin below the tip is always slightly concave, thus giving
the wings a decidedly pointed tip, a character which will serve to distinguish ligula from vaccinii in nearly every instance.
The caterpillar is reddish brown, freckled with paler; the three pale lines along the back are distinctly white on the plate on ring 1, the outer lines edged below with brownish; spiracles outlined in black, and the stripe along them is reddish ochreous. It feeds in spring and early summer, at first on oak, sallow, and hawthorn, and afterwards on low-growing weeds.
The moth flies in October and November, and as it lives through the winter is seen at sugar on any mild night, but it does not seem to turn up at the sallow catkins in the spring. The species is rather less generally distributed than the last, but it is not uncommon in the southern and eastern counties, and is found throughout England to the Tyne. Recorded from very few localities in Ireland, and apparently not noticed in Scotland.