Green Anole
Anolis carolinensis · Reptiles & amphibians
Green Anole, brown phase
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, 7 February 2026
A Green Anole in its brown phase on a leaf at Fairchild in February - brown, but probably not a Brown Anole. The Green Anole is the native lizard of the American South, of gardens and forest edge from Florida to Texas, and it turns brown with cold, stress or shade.
The head is the thing: long and narrow, tapering to a pointed snout, where the introduced Brown Anole has a shorter, blunter face and usually some pattern along the back. This one is plain, sleek and even in colour. I wouldn't swear to it from one frame, but the shape points that way. Brown Anoles arrived from Cuba and the Bahamas decades ago and have out-competed the native across much of its range, partly by eating its hatchlings. A Green Anole in a South Florida garden is now the less likely of the two, and worth a second look.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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