In 1735 seeds of a plant collected in Panama by Robert Millar were donated to Philip Miller of the Chelsea Physic Garden in London.

"[3] Browall had advised the young Linnaeus to finish his studies abroad, then marry a rich girl – even though he was already engaged to Sara Lisa Moraea.

had taken advantage of his absence to court Sara Lisa Moraea and had almost succeeded in persuading her that her fiance would never return to Sweden.

The entry under Browallia grandiflora in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine of 1831 reports: The intimacy and subsequent rupture between Browall and Linnaeus were commemorated by the latter in the specific appellations which he bestowed on the only three individuals of the genus then known.

B. elata expresses the degree of their union; B. demissa its cessation; while the ambiguous name of a third species, B. alienata, while it intimates the uncertain characteristics of the plant, implies the subsequent difference between the two parties.