AdultThe Woodland Skipper is most easily confused with the Long Dash Skipper, Polites mystic. The flight times of the two barely overlap, however, and their habitat choices are very different.
Immature StagesComstock (1929) described the mature larva. The head is black and the body buff yellow with seven black longitudinal stripes. Otherwise, the immatures of this very common species have not been described in the literature. G.A. Hardy (GAH) described the first instar larva as having a jet-black head and a pale, putty-coloured body.
SubspeciesThe Woodland Skipper shows remarkable variation across BC and south in the United States. Scott (1981) attempted to double the number of recognized subspecies from three to six to accommodate this variation. The huge, nearly continuous breeding populations indicate that there is little if any barrier to gene flow, however, and that the variation in colour pattern represents only phenotypic responses to different climatic conditions, not genetically different subspecies. The type locality was restricted to near Beldon, Plumas Co., CA, by Emmel et al. (1998a).