Habitat: it lives on sandy or sandy-gravelly bottoms, from a few metres depth up to about 100 m depth.
Distribution: common all over the Mediterranean. It seems it is missing in the Black Sea. It is very appreciated for its gastronomic value.
Notes: shell solid, globose, roundish in outline, equivalve, inequilateral, umbo rounded and lunule broad, heart-shaped. Valves sculpture made by big concentric lamellae that, on the two sides, mainly the posterior one, make some clear tubercles. In the interspaces of these big lamellae there are other ones smaller that are crossed by radial striae. Inside bright with margin finelly crenulated in the siphonal zone excepted. Periostracum brownish in colour. The ligament extends about one third of the length of the posterior margin. Hinge large and strong, muscle impressions roundish in form.
Colour pattern usually uniform grey, sometimes either brown-yellowish in colour or with stains or shades reddish in colour. Juvenile specimens are a little bit sharp in outline, with lamellae more foliaceus and they have not yet the lateral tubercles. The differences from its similar one Venus casina Linnaeus, 1758 are clear mainly in the valves sculpture that in casina is made by sparser and stronger lamellae without lateral tubercles.
There are many varieties set up by several authors, mainly B.D.D. (1893). All of them of no taxonomic value. The adult specimens average measures are around 45-50 mm in diametre.