[4] The type specimen was found in what was then a wet-mesic sand prairie at 119th Street and Torrence Avenue in what would become the industrial neighborhood of South Deering.

In the 1980s, one of Pfeiffer's specimens had been sent to the Utrecht herbarium, but it went missing after the collection moved to a new site in 2006.

[11] Thismia americana drew interest from botanists because of its extremely specialized ecological niche.

Instead of converting solar energy, the flowering plant was a mycoheterotroph, utilizing local fungi of the southern Lake Michigan wetlands for its nourishment.

[2] The description of Thismia americana was published by University of Chicago student Norma Etta Pfeiffer in the Botanical Gazette[4] and reprinted in her doctoral thesis Morphology of Thismia americana.