Rare with very few vouchered specimens in AR. Small. Fossorial. Glade-dweller. Highly variable: uniform tan with faint reddish stripe, or orange with one neck crossbar, or bright red with dark crossbars running the length of the body, etc. Belly uniform cream. 
Arkansas Herpetological Atlas 2019
This species is represented by 26 records from 5 sources: 11 museum (
), 3 literature (
), 0 research (
), and 12 observation (
), with # additional Trauth et al. (2004) locality points remaining unsourced (
). It has been museum vouchered for 3 of 75 counties (), with 1 additional county having other forms of reported occurrence (). Years of collection range from 1945 to present.
This species has very limited occurrence along the Arkansas-Missouri border, with two areas having recent confirmation: northcentral Carroll County and northeastern Marion County. Additional historical records come from northwestern Benton County, 1945 and 1958, where the habitat at the time was described as rocky, dry, and relatively bare, with little vegetation (Dowling, 1958). These same sites were surveyed circa 2007 and found to be heavily encroached by vegetation, particularly Eastern Red Cedar, rendering them now much less suitable for this species (K. G. Roberts and G. J. Manning, pers. obs.). Highly questionable records from the vicinity of Mena, Polk County (ASUMZ 29262 and 29267 from 2005), may well be the result of deceptive actions by certain individuals. This species potentially has a broader distribution along the northern and western border counties, based on records from McDonald, Ozark, Stone, and Taney counties in Missouri (Daniel and Edmond, 2020) and Adair, Delaware, and McCurtain counties in Oklahoma (Sievert and Taggart, 2020).
