Sarracenia purpureaL.

purple pitcher plant

WFO wfo-0000493544 Accepted WFO 2026-06 8 photographs CC0 / CC BY In the accuracy benchmark

Plate 1 figs. a–h

Sarracenia purpurea, photographed by Lynn Harper
fig. a Lynn Harper, CC0 1.0 / 2022-06-06 / obs. 203984428
Sarracenia purpurea, photographed by Tom Armstrong
fig. b Tom Armstrong, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 205008291
Sarracenia purpurea, photographed by Bernie Paquette
fig. c Bernie Paquette, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204341545
Sarracenia purpurea, photographed by samuellegresley
fig. d samuellegresley, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 204085775
Sarracenia purpurea, photographed by Steven Lamonde
fig. e Steven Lamonde, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199113256
Sarracenia purpurea, photographed by Steven Lamonde
fig. f Steven Lamonde, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199113294
Sarracenia purpurea, photographed by Steven Lamonde
fig. g Steven Lamonde, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199113211
Sarracenia purpurea, photographed by Steven Lamonde
fig. h Steven Lamonde, CC BY 4.0 / obs. 199113181

Every figure is a research-grade observation under CC0, CC BY or CC BY-SA, rehosted with the photographer’s name, the licence and the observation it came from. Photographs under a NonCommercial licence are excluded from this site and are never stored, which costs us a great many pictures and is not negotiable.

Confused withby our own model

These are not lookalikes we guessed at. Each one is a species our identification model genuinely mistook for this plant, and how many times. The error rate is published.

Flowering n = 2,130 observations

Peak flowering in Jun, from 2,130 community-annotated observations worldwide. This is a global aggregate, not a forecast for your garden: the same species flowers on different dates in different hemispheres, and citizen-science records cluster near cities, at weekends, and in spring. Where a species has fewer than 30 annotated records we do not draw this chart at all.

Also published as 26 synonyms

A synonym is not an error. It is a record of botanists disagreeing, in print, about where this plant belongs. Each of these was somebody’s considered answer.

  • Sarazina gibbosa Raf.
  • Sarazina venosa Raf.
  • Sarracenia atropurpurea Berk.
  • Sarracenia gibbosa Raf.
  • Sarracenia heterophylla Eaton
  • Sarracenia parviflora Raf.
  • Sarracenia purpurea f. heterophylla (Eaton) Fernald
  • Sarracenia purpurea f. incisa J.Rousseau & Rouleau
  • Sarracenia purpurea f. klawei B.Boivin
  • Sarracenia purpurea f. pallidiflora S.McPherson & D.E.Schnell
  • Sarracenia purpurea f. plena Erskine
  • Sarracenia purpurea subsp. gibbosa (Raf.) Wherry
  • Sarracenia purpurea unranked rubra Van Houtte
  • Sarracenia purpurea var. chorltonii Burb.
  • Sarracenia purpurea var. heterophylla (Eaton) Torr.
  • Sarracenia purpurea var. montana D.E.Schnell & Determann
  • Sarracenia purpurea var. purpurea
  • Sarracenia purpurea var. ripicola B.Boivin
  • Sarracenia purpurea var. sanguinea Rob.
  • Sarracenia purpurea var. stolonifera Macfarl. & Steckbeck
  • Sarracenia purpurea var. terrae-novae Bach.Pyl.
  • Sarracenia purpurea var. typica Macfarl.
  • Sarracenia purpurea var. venosa (Raf.) Wherry
  • Sarracenia purpurea var. viridis B.S.Williams

and 2 more.

Sourcesevery claim on this page

  1. World Flora Online Plant List. accepted name, authority, classification. CC0. Retrieved 2026-07-12.
  2. iNaturalist. photographs and flowering annotations, CC0 / CC BY / CC BY-SA only. per photograph. Retrieved 2026-06-27.

We publish what we can source and we say so when we cannot. This page has no care advice, no toxicity claim and no native range, because we do not yet have those from a source we can cite.