Wingspan 80-100 mm in males, 90-150 mm in females. The moths are usually green but the instensity of colour and wing patterning is very variable. Male head, thorax, and forewing ground colour green (rarely white, blue-white, yellow, or orange), patterned in a darker ground colour or in white; hind wings and abdomen usually white. Female invariably green, with markings in pale to dark brown on forewings; abdomen patterned in green and dark-brown; hind wings greenish-brown or reddish-brown. Labial palpus apical segment clavate. Male hind tibia with a narrow tuft of long, pink hair-scales that are scarcely widened basally. Eyes in both sexes very close together (interocular index >3.0); some male specimens with eyes horizontally divided. Male sternum 8 shorter and narrower than sternum VII, separate; valva with apical lobe thumb-like, and a single decurved, thorn-like, acuminate process at mid length; pseudoteguminal apices blunt triangular; trulleum unsclerotised. Female anogenital field width 3x height, i.e., a narrow transverse slit.
Larva
Stemmata in 2 vertical rows; late fungal, transfer, and tree-phase larvae with strong rugosites between setae P1, A2 and setae A2, A1. Length full-grown 60-120 mm. Transparent purplish-pink in colour with a hardened dark-brown head capsule. body segments bear pairs of light-purple plates.
Pupa
In larval refugium, with shaft blocked by operculum; arboreal. Tunnels typically 7-shaped.
References
- Dugdale, J.S. (1994). Hepialidae (Insecta: Lepidoptera). Fauna of New Zealand 30, 164 pp.[http://www.landcareresearch.co.nz/research/biosystematics/invertebrates/faunaofnz/Extracts/FNZ30/fnz30ind.asp]
- Alma, P.J. (1977). Aenetus virescens (Doubleday) (Lepidoptera: Hepialidae). Forest and Timber Insects in New Zealand. Forest Research Institute.
