RED PITCHERPLANT 



Sarracenia jonesii Wherry 



Red pitcherplant grows mostly in swamps and meadows underlain by loamy soil of mod- 

 erate or sometimes intense acidity. It seems to have developed in the same general region as 

 Sarracenia flava^ but somewhat farther north. When the Tertiary uplift took place, this plant 

 managed to survive in a small area in Buncombe and Henderson Counties, North Carolina. 

 Seeds from these colonies never reached rivers flowing into the Atlantic, however, and it 

 failed to migrate in that direction. 



Toward the western end of its ancestral area, on the other hand, these relations were 

 reversed. The geologic changes exterminated it from this portion of the range, but before that 

 occurred, seeds reached the headwaters of the Alabama River system, and developed colonies 

 farther down stream. It managed to get a foothold in the Alabama Piedmont province and, 

 when the Coastal Plain emerged from the sea, also invaded that region. Some lateral spreading 

 from the main river valley occurred, so that it migrated a short distance into Florida and 

 Mississippi, but by mid-Tertiary time it had apparently lost all ability to increase its range 

 further. 



II 



