The dry Nothofagus forests and kanuka (Kunzea) groves of North Canterbury and Marlborough have the best habitat for this species. Dead standing trees whose bark is starting to flake away are prime sites but the species is also found in the dry hanging leaves of cabbage (ti) trees, under the stringy bark of hall's totara, the loose flakes of matai and rimu or the paper-barked trees. It often shares its habitat with Celatoblatta vulgaris, Celatoblatta laevispinata, Celatoblatta hesperia and Celatoblatta notialis. Although widespread in the South and Stewart Islands it has yet to be found in Mid and South Canterbury and Banks Peninsula, where on the latter only Celatoblatta peninsularis is found. Considering the great tolerance it has for the very disparate sites in Marborough Sounds, North Canterbury, coastal Westland, Stewart Island and the cold, wet windswept Codfish and Solander Islands, its absence from the wetter inland sites of Westland, the balmier sites of South Canterbury, Central Otago/northern Southland and coastal Otago is very puzzling. It has a very similar distribution pattern to the "cave" weta, Talitropsis sedilloti.

The absence of Celatoblatta cockroaches and Megadromus beetles is one of the strange anomalies of the Otago Peninsula (see Megadromus meritus.
It is very similar to the North Island species Celatoblatta sedilloti