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Hey all...I had an slightly interesting arguement today at work... I was mentioning some different types of snakes to someone I work with and I mentioned "Garder Snake".

She was amazed she had always thought it was "Garden Snake" and didn't know there was such a thing as "Garder". I said "No, it's called a garder snake...There's no such thing as a garden snake"... Someone else piped up and said something to the extent that there are "Garden snakes".

Now...I think I was a bit rude and pompous as I am an expert in all things snake related (joke) and me and another guy kind of laughed at the 2 girls thinking there was such a thing as a "Garden Snake".........

Now....my guess here is that people MOSTLY just mishear "Garder" as "Garden" and it gets passed along from person to person until a lot of people think it's "Garden" snake....

The 2nd guess I have is that "Garden Snake" correctly identifies a group of non specific smaller terrestial snakes which tend to live in gardens and among plants...

My 3rd guess is that both the first and second guesses are true.... Anyone have any idea if "Garden Snake" is a legit term??? I googled the term, and it came up with a few web pages...but not much... Thanks if you actually read this and reply! Let me know if I have some apologies to make to these girls.

- Damian

That is the standard common name for this genus of striped snakes. It comes from the (often striped) garter that held up people's stockings before elastic was incorporated into them. Garder is a corruption of garter. I don't know if garden is a corruption of garder or just comes from where people often find garter snakes. For what it is worth, there are dangerously venomous garter snakes in Africa and Australia that are no relation to the North American garter snakes, so the name is not unique to our snakes.

Paul Hollander

Just to emphasize Pauls note -

The garter snake is named after a female's "garter" - look it up kids.

Apparently at one time women's garters were often striped.

Now stop looking at those pictures of women's upper thighs and get back to herps....