Drosera, which is commonly known as the sundews, is one of the largest genera of carnivorous plants, with at least 194 species. These members of the family Droseraceae lure, capture, and digest insects using stalked mucilaginous glands covering their leaf surfaces. The insects are used to supplement the poor mineral nutrition of the soil in which the plants grow. Various species, which vary greatly in size and form, are native to every continent except Antarctica.
Droseraceae is a family of carnivorous flowering plants, also known as the sundew family. It consists of approximately 180 species in three extant genera. Representatives of the Droseraceae are found on all continents except Antarctica.
Byblis is a small genus of carnivorous plants, sometimes termed the rainbow plants for the attractive appearance of their mucilage-covered leaves in bright sunshine. Native to Australia and New Guinea, it is the only genus in the family Byblidaceae. The first species in the genus was described by the English botanist Richard Anthony Salisbury in 1808. Eight species are now recognised.
Roridula is a genus of evergreen, insect-trapping shrubs, with two species, of about 1⅓–2 m. It is the only genus in the family Roridulaceae. It has thin, woody, shyly branching, upright, initially brown, later grey stems, with lance- to awl-shaped leaves crowded at their tips. The star-symmetrical flowers consist from the outside in of five, green or reddish, free sepals, alternating with five white, pink or purple, free petals. Further to the middle and opposite the sepals are five stamens with the anthers initially kinked down. These suddenly flip up if the nectar-containing swelling at its base is being touched. The center of the flower is occupied by a superior ovary. The leaves and sepals carry many sticky tentacles of different sizes, that trap insects. Roridula does not break down the insect proteins, but bugs of the genus Pameridea prey on the trapped insects. These later deposit their feces on the leaves, which take up nutrients from the droppings. The species can be found in the Western Cape province of South Africa. They are commonly known as dewstick or fly bush in English and vlieëbos or vlieëbossie in Afrikaans.
Drosera aliciae, the Alice sundew, is a carnivorous plant in the family Droseraceae. It is native to the Cape Provinces of South Africa, like Drosera capensis, the cape sundew, and is one of the most common sundews in cultivation. The plant forms small, tight rosettes of wedge-shaped leaves, up to 5 cm in diameter. Under conditions of good lighting, the insect-snagging tentacles will become deeply coloured with anthocyanin pigments, which probably aid in its attraction of insect prey. The plant is relatively easy to grow, and produces attractive scapes of pink flowers, which are held about 30 cm away from the carnivorous leaves, so as to prevent pollinators from becoming ensnared. D. aliciae is very similar in form to a number of other closely related species such as D. slackii, and D. natalensis: the former is rather larger with a slightly different growth habit(8 cm diameter); the latter has hairier stipules and a larger distance between leaf base and the “sticky” trichomes.
Drosera capensis, commonly known as the Cape sundew, is a small rosette-forming carnivorous species of perennial sundew native to the Cape in South Africa. Because of its size, easy-to-grow nature, and the copious amounts of seed it produces, it has become one of the most common sundews in cultivation, and thus, one of the most frequently introduced and naturalised invasive Drosera species.
Drosera rotundifolia, the round-leaved sundew, roundleaf sundew, or common sundew, is a carnivorous species of flowering plant that grows in bogs, marshes and fens. One of the most widespread sundew species, it has a circumboreal distribution, being found in all of northern Europe, much of Siberia, large parts of northern North America, Korea and Japan but is also found as far south as California, Mississippi and Alabama in the United States of America and in New Guinea.
Drosera regia, commonly known as the king sundew, is a carnivorous plant in the sundew genus Drosera that is endemic to a single valley in South Africa. The genus name Drosera comes from the Greek word droseros, meaning "dew-covered". The specific epithet regia is derived from the Latin for "royal", a reference to the "striking appearance" of the species. Individual leaves can reach 70 cm (28 in) in length. It has many unusual relict characteristics not found in most other Drosera species, including woody rhizomes, operculate pollen, and the lack of circinate vernation in scape growth. All of these factors, combined with molecular data from phylogenetic analysis, contribute to the evidence that D. regia possesses some of the most ancient characteristics within the genus. Some of these are shared with the related Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula), which suggests a close evolutionary relationship.
Drosera adelae, commonly known as the lance-leaved sundew, is a carnivorous plant in the genus Drosera that is endemic to Queensland, Australia.
Drosera pedicellaris is a pygmy species of the sundew genus (Drosera). It was discovered in 1997 and described in 2002 by Allen Lowrie. It is endemic to Western Australia.
Drosera anglica, commonly known as the English sundew or great sundew, is a carnivorous flowering plant species belonging to the sundew family Droseraceae. It is a temperate species with a circumboreal range, although it does occur as far south as Japan, southern Europe, and the island of Kauai in Hawaii, where it grows as a tropical sundew. It is thought to originate from an amphidiploid hybrid of D. rotundifolia and D. linearis, meaning that a sterile hybrid between these two species doubled its chromosomes to produce fertile progeny which stabilized into the current D. anglica.
Carnivorous plants are plants that derive some or most of their nutrients from trapping and consuming animals or protozoans, typically insects and other arthropods, and occasionally small mammals and birds. They still generate all of their energy from photosynthesis. They have adapted to grow in waterlogged sunny places where the soil is thin or poor in nutrients, especially nitrogen, such as acidic bogs. They can be found on all continents except Antarctica, as well as many Pacific islands. In 1875, Charles Darwin published Insectivorous Plants, the first treatise to recognize the significance of carnivory in plants, describing years of painstaking research.
Drosera glanduligera, commonly known as the pimpernel sundew or scarlet sundew, is a species of carnivorous plant endemic to southern Australia. It is an ephemeral annual plant that grows in the winter and flowers from August to November.
Drosera uniflora is a species in the carnivorous plant genus Drosera that is native to southern Chile, Argentina, and the Falkland Islands. It is a tiny sundew with a solitary white flower as its name would suggest. Stalked glands on its leaves, which secrete sticky mucilage at the tips, are used to capture and hold insect prey, from which the plant derives the nutrients it cannot obtain in sufficient quantity from the soil. It was formally described in 1809 by botanist Carl Ludwig Willdenow.
Drosera meristocaulis is a perennial species in the carnivorous plant genus Drosera, the only member of the subgenus Meristocaulis. It is a small, rosette- and branched stem-forming sundew that has many morphological affinities to the Australian pygmy sundews. D. meristocaulis is wholly endemic to Pico da Neblina, an isolated mountain on the Brazil-Venezuela border.
Drosera falconeri is a carnivorous plant in the family of Droseraceae. It is endemic to the Northern Territory of Australia.
Drosera peruensis is a carnivorous plant of the genus Drosera, commonly known as the Peruvian sundew. This Drosera species was first identified in Peru in 2002 by Tânia Regina dos Santos Silva and Mireya D. Correa following work to update the genus Drosera for the reference text, Flora Neotropica..
Steel trap is an informal term in the study of comparative plant physiology of the carnivorous plants. "Steel trap", more particularly "active steel trap", refers to prey capture devices such as occur in some members of the family Droseraceae, and in particular in the genera Dionaea and Aldrovanda ("waterwheel"). The term apparently originated with the author Francis Ernest Lloyd in 1942, in which he adopted the overly general term "steel trap" rather than say, "gin trap" or a more adjectival form, for devices such as the lobed trap leaves of Dionaea.
Drosera citrina is a pygmy sundew, a type of carnivorous plant. It is native to Western Australia. The Latin specific epithet citrina means "lemon coloured", refrring to the colour of the flowers. It is closely related to Drosera nivea, which was considered a variety of D. citrina in the past called Drosera citrina var. nivea
Toxomerus basalis, commonly known as the sundew flower fly, is a species of kleptoparasitic fly endemic to Brazil. It was first described by Francis Walker in 1836. It feeds on captured, immobilized insects caught on the sticky leaves of sundew plants, which are carnivorous. Adult flies seem to have some capacity to escape from Drosera leaves if they have not come into contact with too many of the tentacles. The species is non-specific and have been found on large-leaved, semi-erect, and thread-like Drosera species, such as Drosera graomogolensis and Drosera magnifica.
