Genlisea tuberosa was first discovered by the carnivorous plant specialist Thomas Carow in the late 1980s near the town of Diamantina in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Carow, however, identified the specimens he examined as Genlisea pygmaea. The new species was later rediscovered by Fernando Rivadavia in 2007 and formally described by Rivadavia, Paulo Minatel Gonella, and Andreas Fleischmann in a 2013 issue of the journal Systematic Botany.
