Perfect example! the mask is not even slightly eveident in the pines to the north and east, the only explaination that I could come up with is this is a decendant of the pines found in the north and released to control rodent populations in the citrus groves in the south back in the fourties when they scraped the sandhills to make groves, I've been told of truckers that would run over snakes were told to bring live gopher snakes to the citrus groves and they would pay 10$ and the guy that told me was 65 and said he was one of many that collected on the roads in the panhandle and even mentioned okeechobee as the most common place to get money for snakes and jim watt, one of floridas most productive collectors in the 70s and 80s also confermed that he did not understand how the pattern on a few pines that he found in the south look like pines he only found in the north. We beleieve that only northern pines have black and the true southerns have no black at all anywhere! this is why black pigment increases as you approach the georgia border..I'm confident that if dna testing was done on the pb co. pine there is not a doubt in my mind this would give me the credit of proof. oh and phil, I did mean bob z. not frank Z.

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