Wood Turtles: Brown Uppers, Red-Orange Skin, Dark-Margined Pale Uppers

Summary: North American wood turtle habitats get concentric-, dark-, pyramid-ridged uppers, dark-edged pale lower-shells, orange-red skin and webbed hindfeet.

juvenile wood turtle (Glyptemys insculpta); Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), Morris County, north central New Jersey; May 26, 2011; photo by Colin Osborn/USFWS: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Region (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Northeast Region), Public Domain, via Flickr

North American wood habitats appear in distribution ranges from Nova Scotia southward through northern Virginia, westward through southern Quebec and the southern Great Lakes, eastern  Minnesota and northeastern Iowa and everywhere in-between.

Wood turtles bear their common name for belonging among woodland-loving animals within northeastern North America and braving 6-plus-foot (1.83-plus-meter) climbs up bushes, shrubs, trees and vines. Their scientific name Glyptemys insculpta combines the Greek words glypt ("carved") and emys ("turtle") and concludes with the Latin word insculpta ("engraved [texture of upper-shell (carapace)]"). Scientific designations draw upon descriptions in 1830 by John Eatton Le Conte (Feb. 22, 1784-Nov. 21, 1860), from expeditions and surveys of Florida, Georgia and Virginia.

Wood turtle life cycles expect cool streams in deciduous woodlands, marshy meadows, plowed farmlands and red maple swamps with field worms, invertebrate prey and wild fruits.

March through May, May through July and August through October fit respective breeding, egg incubation and hatchling emergence months into North American wood turtle life cycles.

Wood turtles generally go around secretively and undetectably because their brown, keeled (ridged), rough, sculptured upper-shells and black-blotched, hingeless, yellow lower-shells (plastrons) give sun-dappled woodland impressions. They have the emydid box, marsh and pond turtle habit of harboring toxins in their flesh for harvesting pesticide-harmed invertebrates and helping themselves to wild fruits. Their daytime itineraries include sun-warmed interludes on grasses, ground-covers, rocks, soils and stumps and, despite their elongated, flattened, land-unfriendly, untortoise-like, water-friendly webbed hindfeet, diurnal walking intervals.

Agroindustrialists, breeders, collectors, polluters and predatory crows, coyotes, foxes, otters, porcupines, raccoons, ravens, shrews, skunks, snakes, snapping turtles and weasels jeopardize North American wood turtle habitats.

Wood turtle males keep their elongated, straightened foreclaws keen on elaborate courtship patterns like those that other Emydidae box, marsh and pond turtle family members know.

Females lay one clutch of 6 to 18 elliptical, flexible-shelled, 1.625-inch- (4.13-centimeter-) long eggs in flask-shaped nest cavities like those where other emydid family eggs lie. Hatchlings move out of their shells within 40 to 67 days even though the latest emergences sometimes mean overwintering in birth nests until the following spring. Beetles, blueberries, carrion, filamentous algae, flowering violets, fungi, grasses, millipedes, mosses, raspberries, roots, slugs, snails, sorrel, strawberries, tadpoles, tubers and worms nourish omnivorous (everything-eating) wood turtles.

North American wood turtle habitats offer season-coldest coastal temperatures, northward to southward, from minus 45 to 35 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 42.11 to minus 17.77 degrees Celsius).

Alder, American beech, clean, shaded, slow-moving waters below 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21.11 degrees Celsius), hemlock, maple, oak, pine, sedges, sphagnum, white-cedar and willow promote wood turtles.

Five to 9 inches (12.7 to 22.86 centimeters) queue up as total lengths for keeled, rough, sculptured brown upper-shells with 12 large scutes on each side. Adults reveal orange-red foreleg and neck skin, 12 lower-shell scutes blackened on outer margins and 23 semi-pyramid-like scutes resulting from concentric-grown ridges on each upper-shell side. Adult males sustain concave-shaped lower-shells, foreclaws longer and straighter than those of females' and thick tails and vents (excrementary openings) that stick out beyond upper-shell margins.

North American wood turtle habitats trademark orange-red foreleg and neck skin, 12 black-margined yellow lower-shell scutes, 12 semi-pyramidal scutes on each upper-shell side and webbed hindfeet.

Plastron (lower shell) of wood turtle (Glyptemus insculpta) is yellowish with dark patches on each segment; June 10, 2012: D. Gordon E. Robertson (Dger), CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the internet.

Image credits:

juvenile wood turtle (Glyptemys insculpta); Great Swamp National Wildlife Refuge (NWR), Morris County, north central New Jersey; May 26, 2011; photo by Colin Osborn/USFWS: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Northeast Region (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - Northeast Region), Public Domain, via Flickr @ https://www.flickr.com/photos/usfwsnortheast/6762047341/

Plastron (lower shell) of wood turtle (Glyptemus insculpta) is yellowish with dark patches on each segment; June 10, 2012: D. Gordon E. Robertson (Dger), CC BY SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons @ https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wood_Turtle,_male,_plastron.jpg

For further information:

Babcock, Harold L. (Lester). 1919. "Clemmys insculpta (LeConte)." The Turtles of New England; With Sixteen Plates. Monographs on the Natural History of New England; Memoirs of the Boston Society of Natural History, vol. 8, no. 3: 403-406, Plate 29. Boston MA: Boston Society of Natural History.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/12636629
Available via Internet Archive @ https://archive.org/stream/turtlesofnewengl00babc#page/403/mode/1up

Coy, Thomas. "North American Wood Turtle." Austins Turtle Page > Turtle Care > Care Sheets > U.S. Turtles > Pond Turtles > Select.
Available @ http://www.austinsturtlepage.com/Care/cs-nawood.htm

Baker, Patrick J., MS. 2003. "Testudines (Turtles and tortoises)." Pages 65-73. In: Grzimek's Animal Life Encyclopedia, 2nd edition. Volume 7, Reptiles, edited by Michael Hutchins, James B. Murphy, and Neil Schlager. Farmington Hills MI: Gale Group.

Harding, James. 2013. "Glyptemys insculpta (North American) Wood Turtle" (On-line). Animal Diversity Web. Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Museum of Zoology.
Available @ https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Glyptemys_insculpta/

Holbrook, John Edwards. 1838. "Emys Insculpta -- Leconte." North American Herpetology; Or, A Description of the Reptiles Inhabiting the United States. Vol. III: 17-21. Philadelphia PA: J. Dobson.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/3682980

Le Conte, Major J. (John Eatton). 1830. "Description of the Species of North American Tortoises. Read December 7, 1829.: 1. Testudo insculpta, L.C." Annals of the Lyceum of Natural History of New York, vol. III: 112-113. New York NY: Printed for The Lyceum by G.P. Scott & Co., 1828-1836.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/16077223

LeClere, Jeff. "Wood Turtle (Glyptemys insculpta)." Amphibians and Reptiles of Iowa > Turtles > Turtles of Iowa.
Available @ http://www.herpnet.net/Iowa-Herpetology/reptiles/turtles/wood-turtle-glyptemys-insculpta/

Sowerby, James De Carle; Edward Lear. 1872. "Emrys scarbra." Tortoises, Terrapins, and Turtles Drawn From Life: Plates XXIX-XXX. London, England; Paris, France; Frankfort, Germany: Henry Sotheran, Joseph Baer & Co.
Available via Biodiversity Heritage Library @ https://biodiversitylibrary.org/page/2948329

Uetz, Peter. "Glyptemus insculpta (Le Conte, 1830)." Reptile Database.
Available @ http://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/species?genus=Glyptemys&species=insculpta&search_param=%28%28common_name%3D%27wood+turtle%27%29%29

"Wood Turtle Glyptemys insculpta." Excerpted from Animal Diversity. Wisconsin Pollinators > Publications > Articles > Wisconsin Pollinators Reference Articles > Native Species Profiles > Wisconsin Native Turtles.
Available @ https://wisconsinpollinators.com/Articles/T_Wood.aspx