The history of this cultivar was covered in length in the writeup about the Butter Corn.
When I hatched out my very first Caramel corns back in 91, I had no idea they were anything different from run of the mill anerythristic corns. Baby corn snakes can be rather nondescript anyway, but when you are talking about anerythristics and babies that tended to be rather dull colored, well there was nothing to even remotely get me excited. Even the first Butter corns didn't look like anything special either. If someone had come along at that time and offered me a reasonable price for the entire clutch, I would have taken it in a heartbeat and never realized that I had just sold off the very first examples of a new genetic line.
So shed after shed these critters just didn't seem to be turning out into what I had expected them to be. For lack of a better name, some of the first record cards I have still have 'Yellow Anerythristic' on them, as that's about as close as I could figure out what they were. Bear in mind, at this time I only thought they were an odd expression of Anerythrism. And the 'Butters' could easily have been a likewise variation in a snow corn. It wasn't until a few years later when breeding trials with the then unnamed Caramels and Butters proved that they were NOT typical anerythristics nor typical snows. Now I know I could have just called the Caramels as type 'C' Anerythrism, as Bill and Kathy Love had another form of Anerythrism that was sometimes being referred to as a type 'B' Anerythrism, but the continuation of this A thru Z progression just didn't sit well with me. Besides, nine out of ten people could never produce 'anerythrism' anyway and seemed embarrassed to even try, so I felt something less tongue twisting and more descriptive of what this cultivar looks like was in order.
The background color can vary from a light yellowish brown to a light brownish gray color. The dorsal blotches can vary from caramel-yellow-brown to a rich chocolate brown. Doesn't sound all that attractive, now does it? But give them a chance. They will grow on you. Sometimes the subtle hues can prove to produce a more attractive snake than one with the garish neon coloration. This line has proven to be a unique simple recessive genetic trait and is the base stock for the Butter Corns (Amelanistic Caramel) and the Amber (Hypomelanistic Caramel) corns. Other lines using this genetic line are also in the works and will be announced in the future.
One project that should bear fruit this year is the combination of Caramel/Butter and Blood Red. Now I still can't figure out why I decided to do a project like this except for the age old problem of getting those 'what if?' types of questions in my mind. Realistically I'm presuming that a Butter Blood Red would probably look like a Yellow Rat Snake (Elaphe o. quadrivittata). So here I will have spent a few years of time and effort to produce a Yellow Rat Snake look-alike in a corn snake. Then there would be the Caramel Blood Reds produced. Hmm, so what would they look like? Got that in mind yet? Ok, so now what NAME would you think would be most descriptive of what they look like? Of the ones I've been able to come up with, which name would you think would be the most commercially successful for this new cultivar: (1) Dried Blood Corn, or (2) Blood Clot Corn?
One item of note that may be of interest is that it appears that type 'A' Anerythrism completely overpowers the Caramel gene when they are homozygous in the same animal. This is just a preliminary observation, based on a single Anerythristic Motley that hatched from parents that were both Caramel Motleys, so my opinion might change as more evidence is gathered.
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