1902 TAe J^/owermg' q/ Drosera. TOtundKoVia. 221 

 The Flowering of Drosera rotundifolia. 



By James A. Greig. 



The great value of the process of "self-fertilisation" pos- 

 sessed by some plants in perpetuating the species is well 

 illustrated in the case of Drosera rotundifolia, an example 

 of which came under my notice last year (igoi). 



I was living during August in the upper part of the 

 parish of Balmaghie, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, 

 and within a few hundred yards of the house in which I 

 resided there is a piece of moorland literally carpeted with 

 Drosera rotundifolia. On August 2 I marked a number of 

 these plants bearing flower - stems, and carefully watched 

 these during August and into September. Each plant 

 had one, two, or three flower-stems, with from six to twelve 

 buds upon each. On August 2 two or three buds on one 

 stem of each plant showed the points of the white petals 

 still imbricated. On August 4 the weather broke, and there 

 was rain with a low temperature for ten days. At the end 

 of this time there was no difference discernible in the 

 marked plants. A fortnight of fine warm weather then 

 succeeded, the only apparent effect of this being to ripen 

 the advanced buds, and to cause a few more on each stem 

 to show white. This was the only indication of the flower 

 that I saw, and I can hear of but very few people having 

 seen the flower of Drosera fully blown, so that Mr Russell 

 seems to have been very fortunate.^ These flowers under 

 observation never opened, and yet when I collected the 

 plants in September the capsules yielded abundance of seed. 



I have mentioned the large number of the plants of 

 Drosera in this locality, and this was so noticeable that 

 I thought at first they might be propagated by branches 

 from the stem or from the root, or by leaf-bud. But on 

 examination this proved not to be the case. The plants 

 were seedlings, and presumably sprung from the seeds of 

 cleistogamic flowers. 



^ Nature Notes, 1 901, pp. 279, 280. 



