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This is one of three plain orange skippers in our fauna, with only a small dark stigma dorsally on the males, and without a contrasting wing pattern ventrally. Dorsally, the wing margins are dark, and the darkness extends onto the apices of the wing veins. The wing fringe is orange. Oarisma garita has a white wing fringe, more diffuse dark wing margins dorsally, and light coloured wing veins ventrally. Atrytone logan is larger, with longer antennae, more distinct dark wing margins and dark wing veins dorsally, and a dorsal forewing cell-end bar. As well, note that Thymelicus is more prone to hovering in flight, rather than "skipping" in the fashion of the other two species.

This is an introduced European species that most likely spread to North America as overwintering eggs in grass seed, and first detected at London, Ontario, in 1910. It is widely established in eastern Canada and the United States, with isolated colonies in the west, one of which became established in Edmonton in the 1980s and is still spreading outward from that centre.