The origin of the scientific name of the genus is somewhat tangled. Specimens of what is now called "Brodiaea" were first collected by Archibald Menzies, botanist to the Vancouver Expedition, in 1792. Menzies collected the plant from the vicinity of the Strait of Georgia, named "New Georgia" by George Vancouver. The first published reference to the plant did not give it a name. This was in James Edward Smith's 1807 "An introduction to physiological and systematical botany", where Smith used it to argue that the tepals of liliaceous plants are sepals rather than petals: