Dark-branded bushbrown

Appearance

Wet-season form: Upperside dark Vandyke brown; forewings and hindwings with slender subterminal and terminal pale lines. Forewing with a single white-centred, fulvous-ringed, black ocellus, generally set in a square pale area, in interspace 2, occasionally a similar smaller ocellus without any pale surrounding area in interspace 5. Hindwing uniform sometimes with one or two obscure postmedian ocelli. Underside: ground colour similar; forewings and hindwings crossed by a transverse dusky-white discal band, well-defined inwardly, diffuse outwardly, followed by a postdiscal series of ocelli surrounded by a dusky-yellowish, sometimes purplish white, line; the ocelli are similar to the ocelli on the upperside, and vary from two to four on the forewing and from five to seven on the hindwing; of these latter the posterior four, not three as in ''Mycalesis perseus'', are in a straight line; finally, beyond the rows of ocelli on both wings there are pale or purplish-white subterminal and terminal sinuous lines.

Dry-season form: Upperside similar to that in the wet-season form, but paler. Underside from ochraceous brown to dusky brown of a darker shade; basal half of the wings conspicuously darker than the outer portions; the whole surface irrorated with fine brown striae; sometimes a distinct dark discal band crosses both wings; ocelli nearly obsolete, indicated by minute white specks, the posterior four on the hindwing in a straight line as in the wet-season form. Antennae, head, thorax and abdomen brown; the club of the antennae with black and ochraceous marks. Male sex-mark in form 1 as in ''M. perseus'', but the patch of specialized scales on the underside of the forewing half as large again.