PALE PITCHERPLANT 



Sarracenia sledgei Macfarlane 



The ancestral home of pale pitcherplant was presumably in what is now the Cumber- 

 land Plateau of Tennessee, where one or two colonies are reported to survive. It migrated 

 down the Tennessee and the Mississippi River systems, after they developed. Becoming 

 colonized on the Coastal Plain, it then spread eastward into Alabama, there approaching 

 but apparently not intermingling with its eastern relative, Sarracenia flava. 



It also spread westward across Louisiana and is the only species known to have reached 

 Texas. The westernmost station from which a specimen has been seen is near Athens, 

 Henderson County, nearly at longitude 56° W. There are credible records of this pitcher- 

 plant from a short distance farther west, but, growing as it does in acid swamps and springy 

 meadows, it is unable to enter the more arid portions of Texas, and reports of its occurrence 

 there have proved to be erroneous. 



The map here reproduced shows the range of this plant as at present known, although 

 it probably grows farther north in the Mississippi Valley and has merely failed to be 

 collected by the few botanists who have explored that region. 



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