Rhadinaea flavilata

A slender snake with unkeeled dorsal scales, a dark line through the eye, and a total length of up to 40.3 cm (usually 25-33 cm); dorsum is yellowish-brown to reddish brown, paler on the lower sides; venter is white, cream, or yellowish; often there is a suggestion of a dark stripe down the center of the back and another on each side of the body; lip scales are virtually plain white or yellowish in most Florida specimens, usually dark-speckled in the western and especially northern parts of the range; 17 dorsal scale rows posterior to the neck; anal scale is divided; upper jaw has two enlarged, ungrooved teeth at the rear on each side; hatchlings are about 14-16 cm long; mature males and some females have keel-like ridges on the dorsal scales of the anal region (Ernst and Barbour 1989, Conant and Collins 1991).

Habitat is mainly damp pine flatwoods; also slash pine and longleaf pine woodlands; habitat is maintained by periodic fire (Mount 1975, Dundee and Rossman 1989, Palmer and Braswell 1995, Tennant 1997, Ernst and Ernst 2003). Sometimes this snake is found in hardwood hammocks near pine flatwoods, along wooded edges of wet prairies, in sandhills near water, or in ecotones between sandhills and bottomlands and pocosins; some occur in dry live-oak woodlands on coastal islands off North Carolina and Florida (Ashton and Ashton 1981, Palmer and Braswell 1995, Ernst and Ernst 2003). This snake is secretive and fossorial, often occurring under loose bark, in or under rotting logs, stumps, leaf litter, or other debris, buried in sandy soil, or in burrows. During dry periods, it has been found in crayfish burrows. Eggs usually are laid in rotting wood (Martof et al. 1980).

Egg laying may occur from late April or May through August (Behler and King 1979, Ernst and Barbour 1989). Clutch size usually is 2-4. May lay more than one clutch each year (Fitch 1970).