2 2 SARRACENIA PSITTACINA. PARROT-HEADED PITCHER-PLANT. 



one, becomes merely that of a species, in which case, though it 

 might have been derived originally from a common name, it fol- 

 lows its " proper " form. Now psittaaLS is Latin for a parrot, and 

 a botanist might make a genus under a name derived from this 

 word. In time it might be moved to Sarracenia, when in order 

 to carry along its ancient history it would be called Saj-racenia 

 Psittacina. But it does not appear that this has ever been the 

 case with our present plant, and therefore under the rules the 

 capital should be avoided. 



Indeed our present species was not known to the earlier 

 botanists ; S. flava and S. purpiwca being the only two that seem 

 to be referred to in Clayton's collection. Michaux, who gave it 

 the name of psittacina, was nearly the first to notice it as being 

 particularly distinct from others, though it was supposed to be 

 a form of S. rubra, when taken to England by Frazer in 1786. 

 The earlier botanists seem to have had much difficulty in distin- 

 guishing it from S. rubra ; and Croom made a new species of one 

 form under the name of S. pulchella, which is now however 

 referred to S. psittacina. Croom himself was the first to identify 

 it. In " Silliman's Journal " for 1834, he says: " Ever since I met 

 with the species of Sarraccjiia of which I gave some account in 

 this journal for October last, under the name of S. pulchella, I 

 have felt a suspicion that it is the true original of Michaux' 6^. 

 psittacina, which later botanists have united with S. rubra of 

 Walter, but from which this species is very distinct, and forming 

 an apparently intermediate species between S. variolaris and S. 

 rubra. . . . As I have before remarked, the appendix of this 

 species resembles the head of a parrot, and it is the only spe- 

 cies in which the resemblance is striking. The leaves too are 

 shorter than those of either of those of the other species, and 

 therefore particularly deserving the application of the word 

 'brevibus ;' while those of S. rubra, so far as my observation has 

 extended, are as long as, and even longer than S. variolaris. 

 The white spots in the leaves, w^hich I have mentioned, may be 

 what Michaux meant by the term ' coloratis,' while their purple 



