This snake typically inhabits dense vegetation (vines, shrubs, trees) near water; often at forest edges or in fairly open forests; also overgrown pasture, tallgrass prairie, thickets, barrier islands; open marsh and spoil banks in Louisiana; pine-oak, mesic hardwood hammocks, and occasionally mangrove swamps in Florida (see Walley and Plummer 2000). In Mexico, it inhabits tropical deciduous forest. It is mostly arboreal but less so in spring and fall. In Arkansas, it avoids basking (Plummer 1993). It occupies vegetation above ground at night in warmer months; underground in cold weather.

Eggs are laid under objects in damp areas (Ashton and Ashton 1981), in rotting logs (Goldsmith 1984), or in tree hollows. It may nest communally. In Arkansas, gravid females moved five to 75 m (average 36 m) terrestrially away from the lake shore and oviposited in small chambers within the hollowed interiors of small living trees, 25 to 300 cm above ground; individuals may return to a specific tree each year (Plummer 1989, 1990).

This species occurs widely in the United States, extending into northeastern Mexico. Its range extends from southern New Jersey to southern Florida, west to eastern Kansas, central Oklahoma, and central Texas, north to the southern portions of the southern Great Lakes states in the United States, south into northeastern Mexico (Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas) (Walley and Plummer 2000).

In the United States, this snake is probably effectively protected in at least several areas of federal, state, and private lands (e.g., national parks and wildlife refuges, state wildlife management areas). In Mexico there is a need for more information on biology, population, range, threats to this species.