It is believed that John Bartram (1699-1777), the King's botanist, first bequeathed the name, tipitiwitchet, to this small Carolina carnivore. Tipitiwitchet is an obscure name; no one is certain of the derivation and there is conjecture that perhaps the word is 'naughty'. Certainly Dionaea muscipula (Dione's aka Venus or Aphrodite mouse-trap) has some connotations that John Ellis may or may not have intended. Bartram, though, was a Quaker and co-founder of the American Philosophical Society.
William Bartram wrote in the summer of 1778 that he "Observed likewise in these savannas abundance of the ludicrous Dionaea muscipula...This wonderful plant seems to be distinguished in the creation, by the Author of nature, with faculties eminently superior to every other vegetable production; specimens of it were first communicated to the curious of the old world by John Bartram (his father)."
William was taken with the tipitiwitchet. In the Introduction to his Travels, he wrote, "But admirable are the properties of the extraordinary Dionea (sic) muscipula!...let us advance to the spot in which nature has seated them. Astonishing production! see the incarnate lobes expanding...ready on the spring to intrap incautious deluded insects! what artifice! there behold one of the leaves just closed upon a struggling fly; another has gotten a worm; its hold is sure, its prey can never escape--carnivorous vegetable! Can we after viewing this object, hesitate a moment to confess, that vegetable beings are endued with some sensible faculties or attributes...they are organical, living, and self-moving bodies, for we see here, in this plant, motion and volition." (Travels of William Bartram, edited by Mark Van Doren, Dover edition, 1955)
A name we should really not switch it,
A plant with leaves that can twitch it!
The Venus mouse-trap
Is Ellis's crap.
Bartram said, "Tipitiwitchet!"
