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christerb

Hi,

Here's some photos of a South African sundew in my collection that produced strange flowers. Only one out of five flowers on the flower stalk looked normal, the rest had either to many or fewer petals. The first photo is showing a flower with eight petals while the next one is almost normal with six petals.    

plettenberg1.jpg

plettenberg2.jpg


Regards,

Christer
 
is that dew I see on the scape?! that's cool! Is it on there for defense or is the scape really carnivorous?

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Spectabilis73
 
Thanks for the very interesting photos. It appears that the sepals of this plant are also modified into traps, is this correct? Is this natalensis or dielsiana? You have a very unique plant there Christer! Drosera are typically 5-merous, so this is a real eye opener. Is this the only plant to exhibit this trait, or do other seedlings or plants also show it?
 
Hi Spectabilis and Tamlin,

I didn't touch the flower stalk to see if it acually was dew there, but it looked to be to me. For
what purpose it has these tentacles I can't say. The plant is from seed that I acquired some
years ago from Silverhill Seeds. It didn't have a name, but according to them it was collected in
Plettenberg Bay. I have two mature specimens, but only one of them has flowered so far. This
species seem to belong to the confusing aliciae/natalensis group, but it could have some
dielsiana in it too. Other obvious traits of the plant was that the flower stalk was rather tall (40
cm) and that the lower part had quite a lot of hairs. After looking at the on-line (CP Database)
'The Flora of Southern Africa Vol. 13' by Obermeyer the flower stalks length points to D.
aliciae and the hairs on the lower part fits D. dielsiana, so I might be some intermediate form.

When I saw the tentacles on my plant I immediately remembered a post on the CP listserv
some months earlier of a plant with the label D. sp. 'Floating, RSA'. It shares the same dewy
tentacles on the flower stalk and sepals, but the leaf shape differs from my plants, being wider.
Here's a link to a web site with photos of this plant:

http://www.h7n.org/floating/index.html

Finally, here's some low quality photos of the rosettes. The plants aren't in the best of shape,
but the hairs on the flower stalk can be seen.

plettenberg3.jpg

plettenberg4.jpg


Regards,

Christer
 
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