Adults - "FW cream and yellow, heavily mottled with reddish to blackish brown.
2 whitish costal spots are sharpest markings. HW dark gray."
(4) Sexually dimorphic and geographically variable. Males dark brown to reddish brown with distictive white markings proceding and following a median transverse fascia which becomes diffuse toward the dorsal area. Hindwing gray with pale fringe. Females have blurred forewing pattern. Western populations vary to pale, golden tan form with white hindwing. Colorado populations
A. a. vividanus tend to have bright reddish scaling, whereas those in the Pacific Northwest
A. a. columbianus and California are darker with an olive cast.
(3)
Larvae - bright green with black HC until the last instar, which has a dark gray dorsum caused by minute, black spirulae, and a browish head capsule.
(3)