The first official documentation of the species was by Ellsworth Jerome Hill on June 29, 1872, while he was visiting the Langham Island that was then named Altorf Island after the nearby town of Altorf. The habitat of the species, Langham Island, was turned into an official nature preserve in 1966 for the Kankakee River area. Due to its small population and the fact that the range of the species was limited only to a single island, the species was placed onto the endangered species list for the state of Illinois in 1980. Botanist John Schwegman noted in a 1984 report that a 1973 survey by students at Westview High School in Illinois of the range of I. remota found that the population covered almost the entire northwestern part of the island. A 1981 survey found that a single colony of the species on the island contained around 109 flowering stems. Similar reports two years later found that this same colony had declined to just 49 stems and the overall species was made up of only 180 stems in five colonies.
