Whitetop Pitcherplant

Sarracenia

 leucophylla

Whitetop Pitcherplants (Sarracenia leucophylla) make a showy display in pitcherplant savannas that extend from the western Florida panhandle to Mississippi. Each pitcherplant sends up a single long-stemmed crimson flower in early spring, to be followed by a white trumpet that may be suffused with green and red venation, very evident in this image. The species name leucophylla describes the white trumpet, actually a modified leaf. The genus honors French-Canadian naturalist Michel Sarrazin (1659–1734) who maintained that the plants caught insects, a theory dismissed by the scientific community for almost one hundred fifty more years.