SWEET PITCHERPLANT 



Sarracenia rubra Walter 



As shown by the accompanying map, sweet pitcherplant occurs mostly near the fall line 

 in Georgia and South Carolina, although in North Carolina it extends to the coast. Its north- 

 ernmost known station is at Southern Pines, in Moore County. There is also an apparently 

 isolated area in western Florida. 



This distribution indicates that the species originated, as a descendant of Sarracenia jonesii, 

 somewhere on the headwaters of the Santee River system. Being very sensitive to cold, it 

 was exterminated in its ancestral home by the climatic changes accompanying the Tertiary 

 uplift, but seeds meanwhile drifted downstream and colonized the Coastal Plain. Its devel- 

 opment chiefly near the fall line indicates its early arrival after the retreat of the sea, but it 

 soon lost its aggressiveness and only locally reached the outer part of the Coastal Plain. 



The favorite habitat of the sweet pitcherplant is a moist, grassy thicket near the margin 

 of a swamp, although it can grow also in dense shade. The soil is usually peaty and in- 

 tensely acid. 



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