Saturday, October 4, 2014

Botany picture #179: Drosera peltata


Another one from our little walk last weekend: Drosera peltata. My five year old daughter finds carnivorous plants really interesting (who doesn't?). When she heard that there was a sun-dew, she rushed over and started explaining the way these plants capture their prey to our slightly surprised friends and colleagues, all three of them of course biologists themselves... but one of which had actually never seen a carnivorous plant in the wild before!

My daughter has her knowledge mostly from looking at and asking me to explain Adrian Slack's eponymous book which we have in an older German edition. Highly recommended, by the way.

3 comments:

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  2. Nice!
    When I was young I always had the devil's own job trying to work out if I was looking at peltata or auriculata, until I broadened my reading and realized that the species status of the latter is highly dubious. Very variable species someone could have fun doing some work on one day...

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  3. Thanks.
    Here the sepals are hairy, and thus I think it shouldn't be auriculata; I am less sure whether I will always be able to differentiate peltata and hookeri.

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