Roughly 1/3 of all that have been produced so far have no stripe breaks. Even when the stripe is broken, it resumes immediately thereafter (unlike Striped and Motley mutants whose dorsal striping never resumes with any degree of renewal). Predominantly contiguous dorsal striping is the most unique feature of most Tesseras.

In the course of adding Tessera to the myriad current patterns and colors of corns, an entirely new market is now in the making. With most other corn snake mutations, one must raise all the Het F 1 progeny, and won’t receive any mutants until F 2 reproduction (a task that can take four to six years). The most obvious advantage of having Tesseras in your breeding inventory (aside from their inherent beauty) is that because the mutation is dominantly inherited, 50% of every brood of corns from them will be Tessera mutants. Even if those three were F 2s, the likelihood of the mutant patriarch being a Striped Tessera is strong. If these three Tesseras are F 1s, my deduction is that the striped corn he used in the original pairing was actually Striped AND Tessera. How could these descendants of a Striped corn bred to an Okeetee be Motley types, instead of Striped? It is still unclear if those 2.1 Tesseras were F 1s ( first familial generation) or F 2s (the originator of this line is now out of the hobby and difficult to reach – for clarification). Most appeared to be the most perfectly Striped Motleys ever seen – in so much as their dorsal stripes were nearly contiguous from neck to tail tip (something never before seen in any corn snake pattern mutant) – but that was hardly possible if the admission of the breeder were true – that they were products of pairing a Striped corn with an Okeetee corn. Upon receiving the reverse trio from the seller, we all commented on the mutual peculiarity of the phenotypes. Imagine my surprise in seeing what we thought were nearly flawless Striped Motleys from three different females, only one of which was Het for a recessive pattern mutation? After the first brood of 50% Tesseras hatched from the female that was het for Stripe and Amel, except for the perfection of pattern, I was not thinking new dominant mutation, but when both wild-type Okeetees produced the same results, it was obvious that a new mutation was discovered. My Tesseras were produced by the pairing of the male Tessera to three novel female corns (two F 1Locality Okeetees from Chip Bridges Rhett Butler Line and one Okeetee-ish female, Het for Stripe and Amel). I produced about 24 TESSERAS ( so named by the Lodrigues for the tessellated lateral markings) from over 50 fertile eggs, but since the Lodrigues were in the middle of a career move to another State, they were less fortunate, producing just four non- mutant Okeetee-looking corns. In 2008, both the Lodrigues and I independently bred our males (Graham’s and mine) to novel ( unrelated) corns. Profound thanks to Graham, KJ, and Kasi for that gracious and fortuitous gift. KJ and Kasi recommended that Graham gift the extra male to me, and that’s what Graham did. When they arrived, KJ discovered that they constituted a 2.1 reverse trio (two males and one female) instead of the advertised 1.2 trio (one male and two females).

In 2007, Graham Criglow asked KJ Lodrigue to order a 1.2 trio of Striped Motleys that were advertised on one of the popular Online Classified sites – since Graham’s job prevented him from personally receiving them at that time.

Tessera snake