Palmetto question

It is my understanding that the first Palmetto was just discovered one day in someone's yard. Aside from the distinctive stark white ground and confetti sprinkles, the feature I find most striking about this morph is the light grey iris.

This eye and the quality of the bright white, remind me a LOT of leucistic rat snakes. Now, I know that cornsnakes are ratsnakes, but the classification Pantheropis gutta (spell?) is specific to corns, and the Palmetto is marketed as a corn. Since no other cornsnake morphs look at all like the Palmetto, I am curious if that morph isn't actually a hybrid (or even a pure ratsnake?).

Does anyone have more info on this question?

Thanks.

Stripes don't look like any other corn snake morph. Nor do Lavenders. Nor do amels.

A leucistic morph, of which the palmetto is one, is going to have light colored eyes like that. You see it in the texas rat leucistics and the black rat leucistics so it's only natural that a corn snake would have the same characteristic.

I've wondered that myself. I also did a lot of research on it. There are some old threads, I think on this forum actually, that discuss that very question. In the end, it was decided that it was a corn snake. Don at SMR had them for a long time. Not long ago he sold them all to another breeder.
I am very new and inexperienced to corn snakes...or any other snake for that matter. Because the palmetto resembled the leucistic rat snake so much, I started researching in hopes that is what they were because, I cannot afford the price tag of one. You should research, there is a lot of interesting history to be found. I also found an old photo of a 'rat snake' that looked just like a palmetto corn but I could not verify it. I bet Don would give you some history on them if you give him a ring...after the holidays.

if you want something that looks like a Palmetto..... try contacting Rob Zerkle and maybe get one of his calico beauty snakes https://www.facebook.com/6223494344...2349434487239/916089261779920/?type=3&theater

Nancyg

I'm not actually interested in getting one, but it sure is eye catching. I still think it stands out oddly compared to the range of other morphs.

I did some more digging, and it turns out that Soderberg has entertained the question himself. He seems to think that the circumstances of its original find settles the issue. Not sure I would agree with that on its own, but unless a contradictory story turns up, I'm willing to take it at face value.

On further inspection, the Palmetto does seem to have more of a corn shaped head, and a softer "expression" than I've seen in the rats. It lacks the defined brow ridge that more rats have. (For example, the Leucistic ratsnake named Seraf that is featured in a blog, something close to the name of, All Tail No Legs.) Furthermore, I haven't heard anyone say the temperament of the Palmettos is feisty, and based on some videos where the Palmettos are handled (MuscleSerpents Univ. has one), they have the same mellow layed back personality in-hand.

I suppose a DNA test would solve the question definitively. Just curious, that's all.

Nancyg, that Calico Beautysnake is flat out gorgeous!

Don will talk with you. He is a really nice person. I also remember reading about a scale count on the head. I personally didn't care what is what, I just wanted one

and Wow on that Chinese Beauty.

Travis Whisler is the one who picked up the project so Don would have more time to work on his new book. According to the interview on Corn on the Pod episode 10, he used to work in Don's pet shop way back when as a teenager. Thus far my experience with him has been excellent.

I'm pretty well convinced they're pure corns. Folks have been looking for a leucistic corn for a while now, so it was bound to pop up eventually. At least one other colubrid species has a leucistic form that has some random specks of color, and the visual difference between hets and normals (lightened coloration, sometimes with a slight silver cast on the lower anterior sides) is comparable to other leucistic ratsnakes.

nancyg said:

if you want something that looks like a Palmetto..... try contacting Rob Zerkle and maybe get one of his calico beauty snakes https://www.facebook.com/6223494344...2349434487239/916089261779920/?type=3&theater

Nancyg

Click to expand...

The Zerkle's are great. Amy was one of the first people I talked to about corn snakes at the Cin City show. Before I learned about cayenne fires, I was looking for a striped blood, and she told me bloodreds were all terrible feeders and they all faded to dark ugly colors in adulthood. They work with so many different snakes, it sometimes makes me wonder just how knowledgeable they are on any given one. More than once I've questioned their husbandry on some lesser-kept species. But damn if they aren't the nicest folks you'll meet at the show.

nancyg said:

if you want something that looks like a Palmetto..... try contacting Rob Zerkle and maybe get one of his calico beauty snakes https://www.facebook.com/6223494344...2349434487239/916089261779920/?type=3&theater

Nancyg

Click to expand...

The calico beauty looks something like a Palmetto but they sure don't have the disposition of one !!! LOL........

I love my old world rats including my beauties but I don't take them for granted when cleaning or feeding them. I don't take my eyes off of them when their tubs are open and even more disturbing is they don't take their eyes off of me!!!

Usually I just ask don and send him the url to threads like this, but you can figure this out.

Thanks, everyone.
Turned out to be a good thread, and no, I didn't know that the ultra mel is an interspecies hybrid. Wonder if they retain the placid personality.

At this rate ultras might as well be considered corns. There's a lot of speculation that other genes may have also originated with intergrades in the wild. I used to avoid ultra because I was adamantly anti-hybrid, but at this point? I kinda want a few...

^Plus, any descendant of an ultra or ultramel would technically be a hybrid and you would never know it (if they didn't inherit an ultra allele). So might as well nab you an ultramel

I would sure like to have one...{ sighs }

My Ultramel was sold as a pure corn, not a hybrid and when she was young, she would do a King Cobra imitation, but she's the sweetest thing now. I love her to pieces. Guess, I'm glad I didn't find what I wanted to breed to her.

Also, my youngest is a Bloodred and she has always been a great eater and still does a rattlesnake imitation during feeding time and I don't find her colour dark and dull at all

Hi All! My Name is Beau, I have been a member for a short while and don't often post, but I lurk quite a bit. lol

I was happy to see this thread, because it hits on three topics I am fascinated with: Palmettos, Hybrids, and Calico Beauty Snakes!

As a senior in Biology at the College of Charleston, it was the awesome variation of morphs that originally pulled me into the Corn Snake Addiction, although, in the short time I have been keeping snakes I have now expanded to other species besides just Red Rat (aka "Corn") Snakes.

In fact, I just put a down payment on a Calico Beauty Snake! :-D

Reguarding the Palmetto, I *personally* believe that it is a hybrid. Having said that, I think that it is of the same genre of hybrid as the new scaleless corns. That is to say, that it carries the recessive gene for the Palmetto Pattern, but has been back bred to corns for long enough that it is pretty much all corn.

Again, this is just my opinion! However, it is also one of the reasons I ordered my Calico Beauty Snake. A few years ago, I was involved with the CDC through a study program at the college which involved producing DNA gels of misquitos carrying the West Nile Virus; should the opportunity arise for me to use the equipment again, I will post a request here and in other forums asking for DNA swabs from Palmetto corn snakes. I would like to genuinely settle this question once and for all.

~Beau

Obviously from reading the links, this is still in debate by many. As I said, my Ultramel, is awesome temperament wise. Wouldn't trade her for anything.

For your reading pleasure
(Not the full article. Just what is pertinent to this thread)


Friday, July 22 2011


Revolutionary New Cornsnake Mutation - PALMETTO

By DonSoderberg
Fri, July 22 2011 at 10:33



This is my first KS blog, so forgive any potentially awkward composition.


Scale counts are more appropriate for the Cornsnake Pantherophis guttatus species than the only other suspect species found in South Carolina, the Black Rat Snake Pantherophis obsoletus - though these two cousin species have some overlapping scale count zones. Head shape is not like that of the Black Rat - in that the jaw/neck intersection is not pronounced. Demeanor of the hatchlings - as well as that of the only known adult - is remarkably and utterly mild, in so much as not one single specimen has ever struck or otherwise shown any human intolerance (the opposite predominant temperament of the Black Rat species). Other features that distinguish the Palmetto as being a pure corn snake are semen color and a cross-cut body profile more cornsnake-like, regarding its more rounded ventral keel. There is no doubt in my mind that the demonstrated characteristics of all the Palmettos reproduced (and of the only adult specimen) point to this mutation being purely cornsnake. The odds of a NEW leucistic rat snake variation consistently exhibiting so many color anomalies existing in the wild OR in captivity is rare enough, but the notion that such a heretofore unseen and unique mutant variation suddenly entering herpetoculture in the form of a cornsnake, surely decreases the likelihood of this being an inter-species hybrid between Black Rat Snake and Cornsnake. The seven people that I know have handled the adult all instantly discounted the possibility of it being a rat snake. I only emphasize these observations because hybridization between species (and genera) in our hobby is so prevalent lately, it is inherent for someone to suspect that ANY new snake phenotype that is dramatically atypical for one species - could be a man-made, inter-species (or inter-genera) hybrid.

BeauBoi said:

A few years ago, I was involved with the CDC through a study program at the college which involved producing DNA gels of misquitos carrying the West Nile Virus; should the opportunity arise for me to use the equipment again, I will post a request here and in other forums asking for DNA swabs from Palmetto corn snakes. I would like to genuinely settle this question once and for all.

Click to expand...

I think the origin of ultra is more worth looking into. I tend to trust Don's opinion, particularly when he's put so much effort into the palmetto project. I mean he had $12,000 riding on it just being reproducible, so you know he did ever bit of homework he could.

What would you even look for with a palmetto corn? A restriction fragment length polymorphism? It wouldn't be cheap or trivial to prove any polymorphism you saw was from hybridization. Maybe if the palmetto locus was actually cloned (a time consuming and expensive task), the sequence of the coding region or the introns of the palmetto allele (the sequence of introns changes more rapidly during evolution, so two related species would generally show more sequence divergence in the introns than the exons) of the palmetto allele could be informative as to whether it was derived from corn snakes. The morph is new and the hets look like regular corns, I suspect it is no more of a hybrid than a wild corn snake is.

As far as the ultra mutation, the group that identified the locus responsible for amelanism in corns are sequencing the ultra allele. Depending on how thorough their analysis is, they should be able to demonstrate if it arose from a mutation in the wt corn snake allele or if it is not derived from corns.

I am super excited to see the results, especially since I am wavering between a future pairing of my cayenne to a pewter het amel or an ultramel pewter.