114 JouKNAL OF THE MiTCHELL SociETY [September 



covered by J. D. Breckenridge, assistant botanist of the Wilkes ex- 

 ploring expedition, a few miles south of Mt. Shasta, in October, 

 1842; but the flowers, without which the plant could not be properly 

 characterized, were not known until they were collected near the same 

 place by Dr. G. W. Hulse in 1851. It was described and named by 

 Dr. John Torrey of ISTew York in 1853. 



The leaves are reddish or yellow with translucent spots, usually 

 less than a foot tall but sometimes over three feet, and twisted 1 80° 

 so as to bring the opening under the arched hood to the outer side of 

 the clumj:). An appendage resembling a fish-tail, a couple of inches 

 long, which has no counterpart in the other members of the family, 

 hangs in front of the orifice (which opens downward), and is more 

 or less covered with nectar. Whatever liquid is in the leaves must 

 be secreted by them, for rain cannot enter from above, and there is 

 very little rain in that part of the country anyway, for most of the 

 precipitation comes in winter in the form of gnow. It is said to 

 bloom from May to July. I was a little too late to see the flowers when 

 I made a special visit to one of the southernmost known localities for 

 it, in Plumas County, California, immediately after the A. A. A. S. 

 meetings at Berkeley in 1915. The plants at that locality are so sur- 

 rounded by grass and other vegetation that it is not easy to photograph 

 them in their natural setting, but the accompanying illustration gives 

 a good idea of the general appearance of small specimens without 

 flowers. 



The northern pitcher-plant, Sarracenia purpurea, is the most widely 

 distributed species of the whole family, and naturally the best known 

 (PI. 2). Just when and where and by whom it was first discovered 

 is not certainly known, but there is an unmistakable figure of it in 

 Clusius's Bariorum Planfaruni Ilistoria, published in Amsterdam in 

 1601. The genus is named for Dr. Michel Sarrasin (or Sarrazin) 

 of Quebec, who flourished a century later, and sent specimens of this 

 plant among others to Tournefort, in Paris, who was one of the found- 

 ers of systematic botany. The early herbalists who wrote about it 

 thought it to be a near relative of Limonium (a genus including the 

 common sea-lavender of our salt marshes, which indeed it does resem- 



