PINGUICULA LUTEA, 
YELLOW BUTTERWORT 
NATURAL ORDER, LENTIBULARIACE, 
PINGUICULA LUTEA, Walter.—Leaves from ovate to oblong-ovate, an inch or two long; scapes 
five to twelve inches high; corolla an inch or less long; the lobes longer than the short- 
campanulate tube with the saccate base, all or the lower and lateral usually four-lobed or 
two-cleft with the divisions obcordate, or variously sinuate: spur subulate, as long as the 
sac and tube; palate oblong, very salient, densely bearded. (Gray’s Synoptical Flora 
of North America. See also Wood's Class-Book of Botany, and Chapman’s flora of 
the Southern United States.) 
T is always interesting to know the origin of names, and 
3} their meaning; not so much because it is any great 
Bula to the knowledge of the plant itself, as that it keeps us 
from error, and this is equal to knowledge. In connection with 
our present subject we may note that the long known species of 
Europe, Pinguicula vulgaris, among its numerous English names 
was known as the “ Yorkshire Sanicle;” and, misguided by this 
name, a popular English medical oor of the last century—the 
“Botanalogia” by Salmon—figures the Sanzcula Europea for the 
true “ Butterwort” which is the old Pixguicula. It is possible 
that there may be a similar misconception as to the origin of 
the generic name Pinguzcula. All our text-books tell us that it 
is from fugues, Latin for fat, “the leaves being mostly greasy to 
the touch, whence the name.” But there is nothing particularly 
greasy in the appearance or feel of the European Butterwort 
more than in other familiar plants to suggest to the common 
people any such special name for it. 
The botanical name, Pengurcula, seems to have been first used 
by Conrad Gesner, of Zurich, in Switzerland, who published in 
