The Australian pitcher plant Cephalotus follicularis was first formally described in 1806. French botanist Jacques Julien Houtton de Labillardière published the description in Novae Hollandiae Plantarum Specimen, his major work on Australian plants.
The species is also called the Albany pitcher plant or Western Australian pitcher plant. Its unusual traps are modified leaves shaped like small pitchers, complete with a lid and a toothed rim. It grows naturally in wet, nutrient-poor habitats in southwestern Western Australia, where carnivory helps supplement scarce soil nutrients.
The date can be confused with the plant’s earlier collection history. Specimens were gathered around King George Sound in the early 1800s, and Robert Brown had observed the species before Labillardière’s publication. But botanical discovery, specimen collection, and formal scientific description are not the same event. The accepted publication date for the species is 1806. Cephalotus is especially distinctive because its genus contains only this one species, and it belongs to its own family, Cephalotaceae.