Botanical history
First illustration of a Sarracenia from L'Obel's Stirpium Adversaria Nova, 1576
Sarracenia were discovered as early as the 16th century, within a century of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the New World. L'Obel included an illustration of S. minor in his Stirpium Adversaria Nova in 1576.[10] The first description and plate of a Sarracenia to show up in botanical literature was published by Carolus Clusius, who received a partial dried specimen of what was later determined to be S. purpurea subsp. purpurea, publishing it under the name Limonium peregrinum. The exact origins of this specimen remains unknown, as few explorers are known to have collected plant specimens from the range of this subspecies before that time. Cheek and Young suggest that the most likely source is Cartier's expeditions to what is now Quebec between 1534 and 1541.[10] The fragile flowerless specimen that made its way to Clusius 60 years later was enough to excite his interest, but not enough for him to place it among related plants; his closest guess was the wholly unrelated Sea Lavender genus.
The name Sarracenia was first employed by Michel Sarrazin, the Father of Canadian Botany who in the late 17th century sent live specimens of S. purpurea to the Parisian botanist Joseph Pitton de Tournefort, who thereupon described the species. Linnaeus adopted this name when he published his Species Plantarum (1753), using it for the two known species at the time: S. purpurea and S. flava. The first successful flowering in culture occurred in 1773. In 1793 William Bartram noted in his book about his travels in the southeast U.S. that numerous insects were caught in the pitchers of these plants, but doubted that any benefit could be derived from them.[11] It was not until 1887 that research by Dr. Joseph H. Melichamp proved the carnivorous nature of this genus. This finding was supported by a study by J.S. Hepburn, E.Q. St. John and F.M. Jones in 1920.[12] Extended field surveys and laboratory studies by Dr. Edgar Wherry in the 1930s greatly increased the knowledge of this genus, which has further been extended by the more recent works of Dr. C. Ritchie Bell (1949-52), Dr. Donald E. Schnell (1970-2002) and Mr. Frederick W. Case (1970s and the treatment in Flora of North America to be published in 2008).[11]