Southern Milk Snake

Ophibolus doliatus, (Linn.)

Colouration: The red saddles are wider than with either of the preceding varieties, the red reaching to the first row of scales and the black extending over the edges of the abdominal plates. The smaller, alternating blotches contain little or no red, and extend along the edges of the abdominal plates.
Dimensions: The general conformation is much like the preceding forms, but this form is distinctly smaller in size.
Distribution: Maryland to Florida. In the northern portion of the range--westward to Illinois. In the southern portion, westward to Oklahoma and eastern Texas.

This reptile, supposed to be the ancestral form of the confusing variations coming under the technical head of Ophibolus doliatus, forms the connecting link between those varieties having blotches or saddles of a reddish hue on the back, these enclosed within a narrow black border, and the forms that are completely ringed about the body with the black, the yellow and partially or completely with the red. The typical form is smaller than either of the preceding varieties.

The large blotches are usually rich scarlet, the spaces between them either yellow or grayish white. Examined from directly above, the snake appears to be marked with broad rings of scarlet and narrower rings of yellow, bordered with black. The abdomen is white or yellow, with numerous black blotches. The lower borders of the larger blotches sometimes fuse into parallel black bands on the abdomen--a phase of pattern eliciting the varietal name parallelus, of Prof. Cope.

The top of the head may be almost entirely black or reddish, with a broad black band--with some specimens largely yellow. Unlike the preceding varieties (triangulus and clericus) there is no pale band from behind the eye to the angle of the mouth.