and grows to a length of about 1 cm.

It pupates in a cocoon amongst the foliage or in the ground litter at the foot of the foodplant.

male
(Photo: copyright of Brett and Marie Smith, at Ellura Sanctuary, South Australia)

The adult moth has spectacular metallic blue-green head, thorax, and forewings. The hindwings are grey.

female
(Photo: courtesy of CSIRO/BIO Photography Group, Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, University of Guelph)

Sadly the shiny green scales rub off the wings very easily when the moth is handled.

male
(Photo: courtesy of the Photography Group, Centre for Biodiversity Genomics, University of Guelph)

The female has a yellow tuft at the tip of the abdomen. The moths have a wingspan of about 3 cms.

male, underside
(Photo: copyright of Brett and Marie Smith, at Ellura Sanctuary, South Australia)

The eggs are round and yellow, and laid in small clusters on a foodplant. The female moth camouflages the eggs with hairs from her anal tuft.

female, underside
(Photo: copyright of Brett and Marie Smith, at Ellura Sanctuary, South Australia)

The species is found over much of Australia, including

drawing by Félix Édouard Guérin-Méneville, listed as Procris viridipulverulenta
Satyrus Latreille and Procris, Magasin de Zoologie, d'Anatomie Comparée et de Palaeontologie,
Volume 2, Part 1 (1839), Plate 11, fig. 4, image courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library, digitized by Smithsonian Libraries.

Further reading :

Ian F.B. Common,
Moths of Australia,
Melbourne University Press, 1990, pl. 24.12, p. 297.

Pat and Mike Coupar,
Flying Colours,
New South Wales University Press, Sydney 1992, p. 91.

Félix Édouard Guérin-Méneville,
Satyrus Latreille and Procris,
Magasin de Zoologie, d'Anatomie Comparée et de Palaeontologie,
Volume 2, Part 1 (1839), p. 2, and also Plate 11, fig. 4.

Peter B. McQuillan, Jan A. Forrest, David Keane, & Roger Grund,
Caterpillars, moths, and their plants of Southern Australia,
Butterfly Conservation South Australia Inc., Adelaide (2019), pp. 77, 190.

Buck Richardson,
Tropical Queensland Wildlife from Dusk to Dawn Science and Art,
LeapFrogOz, Kuranda, 2015, p. 220.

Gerhard M. Tarmann,
Zygaenid moths of Australia,
CSIRO Publishing 2005, pp. 11-12, 28, 31-32, 37-38, 59, 63, 65, 67-72, 76, 82-83, 108, 116-117, 126, pls. 1, 2, 3, 59, 60, 61, 64.

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(updated 27 January 2012, 15 December 2016, 10 October 2019, 27 April 2020)