Sarracenia jonesii Wherry

Sarracenia jonesii Wherry

Red pitcherplant

by Edgar T. Wherry

Red pitcher plant grows mostly in swamps and meadows underlain by loamy soil of moderate or sometimes intense acidity. It seems to have developed in the same general region as Sarracenia flava, but somewhat father 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 downstream. 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.

Click here for the watercolor by Mary Vaux Walcott.

Click here for USDA's current information and distribution map of this species.

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