The male antennae extend beyond the tips of the elytra, but the antennae of the female only reach about three-quarters down the wing covers. As with many other species, this beetle is lighter and less colorful when it first emerges, darkening and becoming more colorful with age. The immature stage is a typical roundheaded borer. The apex of the mandible is rounded. The larva has a thick, shining skin.
Legs are present and four-jointed.
The adults fly in the spring. Eggs are laid beneath the scales of the bark. The larval mines in the bark, and those extending beneath the bark into the surface of the sapwood, are loosely filled with frass. In tanbark removed from trees, the larvae mine entirely in the bark. In dried firewood with the bark intact, galleries extend through the bark and into the sapwood surface.