On 24th July 1868, the eminent Victorian entomologist G A James Rothney collected a spectacularly coloured wasp with which he was unfamiliar on Stoborough Heath, between Corfe Castle and Wareham, on the Isle of Purbeck, east Dorset. The wasp species that Rothney captured was subsequently described in 1869 as new to science by F Smith, under the scientific name Odynerus basalis.
