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A medium-size (approx. 3.8 cm wingspan) moth with pale yellow-brown or grey-brown forewings and light grey hindwings. The reniform, orbicular and claviform spots are filled with dark scales which also surround the spots as a dark shade, thus hili-liting the pale outline of the spots. Most similar to the variable and much more common darker grey or red-brown Xestia smithii. Te larger and more contrasting dark area arround the spots will searate the two species. See Lafontaine (1998) for structural differences separating these two species, as well as for illustrations of the adult and the genitalia of both sexes. The larvae is decribed by both Crumb (1956:111) and Lafontaine )(op. cit: 120).

Adults are nocturnal and come to light. The single brood flies in late summer. Larval hosts include a variety of trees and shrubs in several families including hazel, apple, cherry, raspberry, other Rubus sp., rhododendron and willow (Crumb, 1956). Found in open wooded or shrubby areas.

Plebia is a western species, found from southwestern Alberta and southern BC, south along the coast to central CA and in the mountains to northern UT and central CO. In Alberta it is known only from a single specimen collected by David Hardwick on August 12, 1961, 12 miles east of Champion. Frequents wooded and shrubby areas in the mountains; nothing is known of the habitat where it was collected in Alberta.