192 PRACTICAL COURSE IN BOTANY 
impossible to a small insect when once it is ensnared. 
When we remember that these plants are generally found 
in poor, barren soil, we can appre- 
ciate the value to them of the ani- 
mal diet thus obtained. 
210. Flytraps. — The most re- 
markable examples of insect-catch. 
ing leaves are the Venus’s-flytrap, 
found in the seacoast region of 
North Carolina, and the sundew 
(Drosera rotundifolia), common on 
the margins of sandy bogs and 
ponds. The latter is a delicate, 
innocent-looking little plant, and 
- owes its poetic name to the dewlike 
appearance of a shining, sticky 
fluid exuded from glands on its 
leaves, which glitter in the sun like dewdrops. It is, however, 
a most voracious carnivorous plant, the sticky leaves acting 
as so many bits of fly paper by means of which it catches its 
Fic. 260.— Plant of sundew. 
Fies. 261-263. — Leaves of sundew magnified: 261, leaf expanded ; 262, leaf 
closing over captured insect ; 263, leaf digesting a meal. 
prey. When a fly has been trapped, the tentacles close 
upon it, the edges of the leaf curve inward, making a sort of 
stomach, from the glands of which an acid juice exudes and 
