THE CLEVERNESS OF THE SUNDEW 



Showing the devices of a carnivorous plant to catch its prey 



By HAROLD BASTIN 



Illustrated with photographs by the Author 



FEW British plants are more interest- 

 ing than the Sundews — those lowly 

 but beautiful dwellers in boggy 

 places. Three species are recognised, to 

 wit, the Round-leaved Sundew, the Long- 

 leaved Sundew (both of which often grow 

 together in profusion), and the Great 

 Sundew, which is a more robust plant, 

 but much rarer. The most interesting 

 point about the Sundew is that it catches 

 flies — as everybody knows. The leaves 

 are densely covered with red hairs, each 

 of which is tipped with a drop of viscid 

 fluid. This fluid is secreted by glands 

 that are found at the extremity of the 

 hairs, and the most curious thing about 

 it is the fact that it actually contains a 

 substance which closely resembles the 

 pepsine of an animal's stomach. When 

 a fly, attracted by the brilliant display 

 of the Sundew leaves, alights upon one 



of them, it is at once captured and held 

 fast as effectually as it would be had it 

 flown against a fly-paper. If one watches 

 a leaf which has just succeeded in catching 

 a fly, one sees that it slowly but surely 

 bends over and grasps its prisoner, bring- 

 ing its red. hair-like tentacles into position 

 and pouring forth a copious flow of 

 digestive fluid from the glands at their 

 tips. In this way the fly is speedily 

 digested — its juices being absorbed by 

 the plant to supply the nitrogen which, 

 we are told, it is unable to procure in 

 sufficient quantities from the marshy soil 

 in which it grows ; and when one fly is 

 disposed of, the Sundew leaf casts the 

 indigestible portions aside and resets itself 

 in preparation for another victim. 



Amazing as these facts are, they by 

 no means exhaust the interest of the 

 Sundew. I think it was the American 



THREE PHOTOGRAPHS TAKEN AT INTERVALS OF 40 MINUTES. 



A fr.-i(;ment of meat was suspended by a hair from a large needle, the meat hanging not far from a fully expanded 

 Sundew leaf. The photographs show how the leaf turned towards, and eventually touched, the meat. It 

 never succeeded in fully ftraspinft the meat, probably because the distance was loo great. But how did the 

 leaf know that the meat was there at all ? 



8^2 



