About Xanthia gilvago (Denis & Schiffermüller), 1775
Scientific name: Xanthia gilvago (Denis & Schiffermüller), 1775
Forewing is deep yellow ochreous with a brownish flush; all markings are blackish. The inner and outer lines are double. The inner line is oblique, outwardly lunulate, with a thick, blotchy inner arm. The outer line is inwardly lunulate, concise, with a thick outer arm. The submarginal line forms a row of dark spots, preceded by a dark costal blotch attached to the outer line, and followed by a diffuse dark shade. The median shade is blackish, thick and diffuse. The orbicular stigma matches the forewing ground colour and has a dark ring; it is separated by the median shade from the equally pale reniform stigma, which has a black lower lobe. The fringe matches the forewing ground colour and is mottled with dark. The hindwing is yellowish, with a grey inner marginal area.
Several named aberrations are described. When the brown tinge of the forewing (and sometimes the entire wing) is intensified, along with the dark markings that form a partially continuous dark band from the median shade to the outer line, this form is ab. suffusa Tutt (28 g). When the yellow tinge is almost entirely absent, the ground colour becomes olive grey, markings are dark grey, and the hindwing is whitish, this form is ab. griseosignata Spul. (28 g). The rarer form cinnamomeago Spul. (28 h) has a uniform fulvous ground colour, finer markings, with markings of the terminal area, and often also the basal area, more or less obsolete, and a deeper yellow hindwing. A paler ochreous form occurs from the Goorais Valley, Kashmir; its extreme development, ab. derasa ab. nov. (= ab. 2 Hmps.), which is an unknown taxon not classified as gilvago, is wholly pale ochreous with only the lower half of the reniform stigma and the fringe dark brown, matching exactly the unmarked flavescens form of fulvago L.
The larva is pinkish brown, with pale dorsal and subdorsal lines that are dark-edged. It has a dorsal series of dark Y-shaped marks, and a pale spiracular line. The wingspan of this species is 32–38 mm.
