SUNDEW TKIBE 89 



Plant perennial. There is not one of our wild flowers which has, during the 

 last century, excited so much curiosity as our Sundew. This is the most 

 frequent of the three species, and though we can hardly call it a common 

 plant, yet it is abundant on many of our peaty bogs and heaths, as on those 

 of Reigate in Surrey, Stoke Common near Slough, and Sandown in the Isle 

 of Wight. Its flat leaves are on stalks, and roundish in form, tinged more or 

 less with crimson, and surrounded with bristle-like hairs, and they lie in 

 rosettes around its root, shining among the pale green bog-mosses. The leaf- 

 less stalks bear in July small white starry flowers. Yet few of these flowers 

 expand, and one may look upon the nodding buds summer after summer, and 

 think that the flower never expands at all, yet wonder to see how, without 

 their expansion, the seed-vessels grow and ripen their seeds, and the patches 

 of leaves grow larger and larger, and more of them are to be seen each suc- 

 cessive summer. Gerarde and the older herbalists always in their illustra- 

 tions of the plant represented it in its drooping unfolded condition. In the 

 case of the author, long summers of patient Avatching were not rewarded by 

 the loveliness of the full flower, and never has it been her lot, after years of 

 acquaintance with it, to see it in all its glory, when masses of Sundew were, 

 as described by a friend, " looking like crowds of pearls scattered over a fairy 

 carpet of rubies." Linnaeus had said that the blossom opened at ten in the 

 morning and closed at mid-day. Yet no early rising, nor even the going 

 forth with the dawn, will ensure the certainty of finding it in its perfect 

 state ; nor can botanists explain this shyness and uncertainty of bloom. Even 

 as lately as five-and-twenty years since, several well-known botanists wrote to 

 the editors of magazines of natural history, inquiring if anyone had really 

 seen the fully blown flower ; and one careful observer replied by remarking 

 that having transferred from the bog some plants of Drosera rotundifolia to 

 some pots in his garden, he had at length, on one July day, seen, at half-past 

 ten o'clock in the morning, the little white star of the flower. He added 

 that this closed at one o'clock, as did also four other flowers which opened on 

 the following day. On the other hand, several correspondents stated that 

 although this Sundew opened at those hours only, yet even in the brightest 

 sunshine it often continued closed at' the time at which it was expected to 

 unfold. 



The same remarks may be made of the other two less common of our 

 native species, which are sometimes found growing near the round-leaved 

 plant. 



Bishop How informs the author that he found them all three on Whitall 

 Moss, near Ellesmere, where he saw besides the rare shrub Andromeda 

 (A. polifolia) in great abundance ; while on the neighbouring moss of Welsh 

 Hampton the still rarer little marsh scheuchzeria (*S'. palustris) grew in some 

 quantity. 



But if the flower has its mysteries, those of its leaves are the special point 

 of the Sundew. These, which when young look like little green hoods, are 

 now ascertained to form a number of complex vegetable traps, wlien they 

 afterwards unfold into concave disks. The leaves are generally broader 

 than long, and are covered with hairs, each of which bears a gland at the 

 top. These hairs are called tentacles by Darwin, because of their power of 



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