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.
Hoverflies, also called flower flies or syrphids, make up the insect family Syrphidae. As their common name suggests, they are often seen hovering or nectaring at flowers; the adults of many species feed mainly on nectar and pollen, while the larvae (maggots) eat a wide range of foods. In some species, the larvae are saprotrophs, eating decaying plant and animal matter in the soil or in ponds and streams. In other species, the larvae are insectivores and prey on aphids, thrips, and other plant-sucking insects.
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.
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 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 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.
Allograpta is a very large and diverse genus of hoverflies present throughout the world except most of the palearctic region. The adults are brightly coloured flower pollinators and most larvae have a predatory feeding mode involving soft-bodied sternorrhynchans. Certain species have diverged from this and their larvae have been found to be leaf-miners, stem-borers or pollen-feeders.
Toxomerus is a very large genus of hoverflies. They are found in many parts of North and South America. Most larvae are predators on soft bodied insects, though a few species have been shown to feed on pollen. Adults feed on the pollen of a wide range of flowers.
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.
Parasyrphus nigritarsis is a species of hoverfly, from the family Syrphidae, in the order Diptera. It is known from northern Europe and North America, and has been considered to be a rare species in parts of its range. Adults visit flowers as a source of nutrition, and females lay their eggs on clutches of eggs of leaf beetles. When the Parasyrphus larvae hatch, they first consume leaf beetle eggs and then consume immature beetles until they reach the pupal stage. This species is related to hoverflies that prey on aphids as larvae, and has been investigated in studies of chemical ecology and food web ecology.
Diptera is an order of winged insects commonly known as flies. Diptera, which are one of the most successful groups of organisms on Earth, are very diverse biologically. None are truly marine but they occupy virtually every terrestrial niche. Many have co-evolved in association with plants and animals. The Diptera are a very significant group in the decomposition and degeneration of plant and animal matter, are instrumental in the breakdown and release of nutrients back into the soil, and whose larvae supplement the diet of higher agrarian organisms. They are also an important component in food chains.
Drosera kaieteurensis is a plant from the sundew family (Droseraceae).
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 pulchella, a type of pygmy sundew , is a species of carnivorous plant native to southwestern Australia. As their common name suggests, they are a small species that usually 15 to 20 millimeters wide. They typically grow in clusters that completely cover an area like a patch of moss. The namesake sticky dew at the ends of their leaves is designed to trap insects so that the plants can absorb nutrients as the insect decomposes.
