AT A GLANCE
- Common Name: English Sundew
- Scientific Name: Drosera anglica
- Category: Plants
- Subcategory: Carnivorous Plants
- Range: Circumboreal across northern North America, northern and central Europe, and northern Asia to Japan; historically described from England
- Habitat Type: Extremely wet, nutrient-poor, base-poor Sphagnum bogs, quaking mire lawns, flushes, and peat pool margins with standing water
- IUCN Red List Status: Least Concern
- Lifespan: Perennial carnivorous herb
- Diet: Carnivorous/Autotrophic (photosynthetic, supplemented by trapping and digesting damselflies, dragonflies, moths, midges, and mosquitoes)
- Average Size/Weight: Rosette diameter 8 to 15 cm; leaf blade length 15 to 35 mm, width 2 to 4 mm; flowering scape 10 to 20 cm tall
- Key Defining Feature: Erect, graceful carnivorous bog plant with elongated, spoon-shaped upright leaves densely covered in brilliant ruby-red glandular tentacles glistening with clear, sticky mucilage
Overview
The English Sundew (Drosera anglica), also widely known as the Great Sundew, is one of the largest, most spectacular, and most voracious carnivorous plants native to the temperate and boreal peatlands of the Northern Hemisphere. Unlike its cousin the Round-leaved Sundew, the English Sundew produces tall, semi-erect, paddle-shaped leaves that reach skyward like glistening ruby fingers. Thriving in the wettest, soupiest quagmires of Sphagnum bogs, its sticky, dew-capped tentacles are potent enough to capture and consume large insects, including damselflies and moths.
Biology and Physical Characteristics
Drosera anglica grows as an upright or semi-erect rosette of leaves up to 15 cm across. Each leaf consists of a slender, hairless petiole topped by an elongated, linear-spathulate (narrow spoon-shaped) leaf blade measuring up to 35 mm long and only 2 to 4 mm wide. The upper leaf surface is crowded with hundreds of brilliant crimson stalked glands (tentacles), each crowned with a sparkling bead of clear, viscous mucilage. In midsummer, it produces an erect flowering stalk (scape) bearing three to eight delicate, five-petaled white flowers that open for only a few hours in warm, bright sunlight.
Behavior and Ecology
Drosera anglica is an active, predatory flypaper trap. When an insect brushes against the glistening mucilage, it becomes hopelessly stuck. The struggles of the prey trigger an electrical nerve-like action potential that stimulates the tentacles to bend inward toward the leaf center within minutes, curling the entire leaf blade around the insect’s body to maximize contact. The glands then secrete a potent cocktail of digestive enzymes (proteases, nucleases, and phosphatases) that liquefy the insect’s internal organs, absorbing vital nitrogen, phosphorus, and minerals directly into the leaf cells over several days to survive in acidic, nutrient-void bog water.
Conservation and Human Impact
The English Sundew is classified as Least Concern globally on the IUCN Red List due to its immense circumpolar distribution across the remote boreal peatlands of Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia, and Siberia. However, in Western and Central Europe (including the UK, France, and Germany), it has suffered severe historical declines and localized extinctions due to widespread peat extraction, drainage of lowland mires, and commercial forestry plantations.
Interesting Factoid
The English Sundew is large and powerful enough to catch and consume full-sized damselflies; passing insects mistake the glistening droplets of glue on its upright red leaves for refreshing morning dew, only to find themselves hopelessly trapped.