White to Green and Brown Flowers 137 



ROUND-LEAVED SUNDEW 



Drosera rotundifolia. Sundew Family 



Stems: slender, glabrous. Leaves: orbicular, spreading on the 

 ground. Flowers: in a one-sided raceme, four to twelve flowered. 

 Fruit: seeds fusiform, pointed at both ends. 



This bog-herb has a quantity of small round leaves that 

 grow on flat stalks, and are covered with reddish glandular 

 hairs which secrete a fluid that entraps insects. This fluid 

 is exuded in tiny drops at the tips of the hairs, so that the 

 plant always appears to be covered with dew and is very 

 sticky. The white flowers grow in a one-sided cluster, and 

 open usually in sunshine, but only during a very few hours 

 of the day, sometimes not opening at all for several days in 

 succession. The Sundews grow chiefly in wet places, pref- 

 erably in sphagnum bogs. 



" What's this I hear 

 About the new carnivora ? 

 Can little plants 

 Eat bugs and ants 

 And gnats and flies? 

 A sort of retrograding; 

 Surely the fare 

 Of flowers is air, 

 Or sunshine sweet ; 

 They shouldn't eat, 

 Or do aught so degrading." 



It is perfectly true that the Sundew not only catches in- 

 sects with its _sticky fluid, so like a liquid gum, but also 

 actually digests and absorbs the nutriment thus derived 

 from the soft parts of its victims. When a fly caught by 

 the glutinous globules touches one of the glandular hairs, 

 or we might almost call them tentacles, an irritation is set 

 up communicable through the leaf substance to the other 



