Article & Photos by Gavin W. Maneveldt
DEPARTMENT OF BIODIVERSITY AND CONSERVATION BIOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF THE WESTERN CAPE
With an armor of glistening red tentacles insectivorous sundews await
unsuspecting little insects that might become entangled in their sticky
digestive secretions.
I
have always been fascinated
by strange and unusual plants
like glass-worts, with their waterproof bodies, and mesems
that mimic their surroundings. Insect-eating plants are no exception.
My first encounter with an insectivorous plant in 1980 was a Venus
flytrap in a florist’s window display.
This strange looking plant had
toothy, hinged leaves that sprang
together trapping little flies. I was
intrigued and bought it. Unfortunately I was not able to keep it alive
for very long and was determined
to learn all I could about such
plants. So, I suspect, began my curiosity into the world of plants.
It was not until 1989 that, as an
independent undergraduate university student, a few friends and I
went swimming in the Bain’s Kloof
mountains. Exploring shaded overhangs and peering among mysterious shrubbery I found, to my
amazement, an abundance of naturally occurring insect-eating sundews.
Sundews belong to the genus Drosera of which there are about 194
Sundews bear red, knob-shaped, dewy, sticky, glandular hairs or
tentacles.
species reported worldwide. Twenty species are currently recorded in
South Africa. Of these, fifteen species occur in the Western Cape and
ten of them are endemic to the region. The name Drosera is derived
from the Greek word droseros,
meaning dewy, which describes the
damp sticky glands on the plant’s
leaves. Sundews generally flourish
in extremely poor peaty soil. These
plants have resorted to an insectivorous way of life in order to obtain
the valuable nitrogen that is generally not available in the soil in which
Unsuspecting insects are trapped by
the sticky glandular tentacles.