Indian Reed
Canna indica

American Cowslip
Dodecatheon meadia

Round-Leaf Sundew
Drosera rotundifolia

Lamb of Tartary
Cibotium barometz

Sensitive Plant
Mimosa pudica

Peruvian Bark Tree
Cinchona officinalis

Golden Shower Tree
Cassia fistula

Night-Blowing Cereus
Selenicereus grandiflorus

Pheasant’s-Eye
Adonis annua

Indian Reed
Canna indica

American Cowslip
Dodecatheon meadia

Round-Leaf Sundew
Drosera rotundifolia

Lamb of Tartary
Cibotium barometz

Sensitive Plant
Mimosa pudica

Peruvian Bark Tree
Cinchona officinalis

Golden Shower Tree
Cassia fistula

Night-Blowing Cereus
Selenicereus grandiflorus

Pheasant’s-Eye
Adonis annua

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Round-Leaf Sundew Drosera rotundifolia

Round-Leaf Sundew Drosera rotundifolia

Round-Leaf Sundew
Drosera rotundifolia

Drosera by Weinmann Drosera by Weinmann

J. W. Weinmann

Phytanthoza iconographia  (1745)

J. W. Weinmann
Phytanthoza iconographia

(1745)

“Herr Haller has also described, however briefly, the uses of this plant in his art of healing, so that we take license to insert those words here: Both kinds of this plant are caustic and make the skin rough and scaly. It is not even beneficial to the small livestock, which, in fact, becomes consumptive because of it.”

Drosera rotundifolia by E. Blackwell Drosera rotundifolia by E. Blackwell

Elizabeth Blackwell

Herbarium Blackwellianum  (1765)

Elizabeth Blackwell
Herbarium Blackwellianum

(1765)

“Some consider it a great cardiotonic and beneficial for consumption, convulsive fits, and the plague. In the past, a heart-strengthening drink, under the name Rosa solis, whose main ingredient was this herb, had been held in the greatest esteem. Now, however, it has fallen almost completely into oblivion.”

Illustration of Drosera in Pierre Bulliard Illustration of Drosera in Pierre Bulliard

Pierre Bulliard

Herbier de la France  (1784)

Pierre Bulliard
Herbier de la France; ou, Collection complette des plantes indigenes de ce royaume

(1784)

“This lovely plant is common in damp ditches, wetlands. It flowers in July and August; it is an annual...each flower consists of a semi-quinquefid monophyllic calyx, a corolla with five petals, five stamens, and an oblong ovary topped with five styles curved like the filaments of the stamens...for fruit, it has a unilocular capsule with three valves to which the seeds are attached...the leaves are concave like a bowl and covered inwards and on the edges with long glandular hairs.”

Drosera rotundifolia in Flora Danica Drosera rotundifolia in Flora Danica

G. C. Oeder

Flora Danica  (1792)

G. C. Oeder
Flora Danica

(1792)

“Common in damp locations in Denmark and Norway.”

Drosera rotundifolia by Oskamp Drosera rotundifolia by Oskamp

Dirk Leonard Oskamp et al.

Afbeeldingen der Artseny-Gewassen  (1800)

Dirk Leonard Oskamp et al.
Afbeeldingen der Artseny-Gewassen

(1800)

“Use. The leaves and blades of this plant are sharp, sour and acrid, with a somewhat milk-like resin which harms the skin and resolves dry. The plant is considered poisonous and indeed deadly for sheep. One uses it as treatment against consumption, or tight breast, whooping cough, and for encouraging general life-strength. Various ancient writers have attributed wonders to this treatment, but their extensive praises have invited mistrust about their observations.”

 Drosera rotundifolia with the remains of a butterfly  Drosera rotundifolia with the remains of a butterfly

Noah Elhardt

Drosera rotundifolia with the remains of a butterfly  (2005)

Noah Elhardt
Drosera rotundifolia with the remains of a butterfly

(2005)

Location and Habitat: Growing in green sphagnum moss on Mt. Hood, Oregon, North Pacific, United States.

Drosera rotundifolia flower photograph Drosera rotundifolia flower photograph

C. Gracie

NYBG Steere Herbarium Specimen (2008)

C. Gracie
NYBG Steere Herbarium

(2008)

Bud of Drosera rotundifolia

Location: United States of America. New York. St. Lawrence Co. Ca. 11.5 miles SW of the center of Tupper Lake. Vicinity of Low's Lower dam on the Bog River. Alt. 519 m. (1703 ft.)

Collectors: S. A. Mori with C. A. Gracie & E. F. Hecklau (12 Jul 2008)

Description: Herb, 10-12 cm tall. Phenology of specimen: bud.

Habitat: On log in water next to shore.

Note: The sticky, glandular trichomes on the round leaf blade aid in the capture of insects.

Drosera rotundifolia herbarium specimen Drosera rotundifolia herbarium specimen

S. A. Mori with S. Christoph, C. Davidson, and C. Gracie

NYBG Steere Herbarium Specimen (2010)

S. A. Mori with S. Christoph, C. Davidson, and C. Gracie
NYBG Steere Herbarium

(2010)

Herbarium Specimen

Location United States of America. North Carolina. Brunswick Co. Hwy 211, 5.8 kms NNW from junction with Hwy 17. Alt. 14 m. (46 ft.)

Collectors: S. A. Mori with S. Christoph, C. Davidson, and C. Gracie (22 May 2010)

Description: Herb, 5-7 cm tall. Phenology of specimen: Bud.

Habitat: Loblolly pine dominated area.

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Erasmus Darwin’s The Botanic Garden  (1791)

Queen of the marsh, imperial Drosera treads
Rush-fringed banks, and moss-embroider’d beds;230
Redundant folds of glossy silk surround
Her slender waist, and trail upon the ground;
Five sister-nymphs collect with graceful ease,
Or spread the floating purple to the breeze;
And five fair youths with duteous love comply235
With each soft mandate of her moving eye.
As with sweet grace her snowy neck she bows,
A zone of diamonds trembles round her brows,
Bright shines the silver halo, as she turns;
And, as she steps, the living lustre burns.240

Drosera. l. 231. Sun-dew. Five males, five females. The leaves of this marsh-plant are purple, and have a fringe very unlike other vegetable productions. And, which is curious, at the point of every thread of this erect fringe stands a pellucid drop of mucilage, resembling a ducal coronet. This mucus is a secretion from certain glands, and like the viscous material round the flower-stalks of Silene (catchfly) prevents small insects from infesting the leaves. As the ear-wax in animals seems seems to be in part designed to prevent fleas and other insects from getting into their ears. See Silene. Mr. Wheatly ... observed these leaves to bend upwards, when an insect settled on them, like the leaves of the muscipula veneris, and pointing all their globules of mucus to the center, that they completely intangled and destroyed it. M. Broussonet, in the Mem. de l'Acad. des Sciences for the year 1784. p. 615. after having described the motion of the Dionæa, adds, that a similar appearance has been observed in the leaves of two species of Drosera.

(II.1:231—42)

Taxonomy

Linnæan Classification

Class: 5. Pentandria (Five Males)
Order: 5. Pentagynia (Five Females)
Genus: Drosera
Species: Drosera rotundifolia

Modern Classification

Class: Equisetopsida C. Agardh
Subclass: Magnoliidae Novák ex Takht.
Super-
order
Caryophyllanae Takht.
Order: Caryophyllales Juss.
ex Bercht. & J. Presl
Family: Droseraceae Salisb.
Genus: Drosera L.
Species: Drosera rotundifolia L.
Plants That Eat Flesh

The genus Drosera includes nearly 250 known species that all have something extraordinary in common: these plants eat flesh. Maria Jacson provides a vivid description of the process: “When an insect settles upon its leaves, it has been observed to bend them upward, and, by pointing all their globules of mucus to the center, completely to have entangled the depredator” (1811). Although Drosera is native to England and, in fact, to every continent except Antarctica, its ability to ensnare insects was not observed and recorded until 1780. Around this time, however, several scientists reported similar findings.

In England, this task falls to the surgeon, Mr. Whately (Darwin spells it “Wheatly”), who sends his report to William Withering, one of England’s most popular botanists. Withering includes the account in the second edition of his bestselling book An Arrangement of British British Plants (1787). According to Withering, Mr. Whately observed that inside of every curled leaf of the Drosera lays an insect. Whately conducts experiments on the leaves, pressing a pin to them to demonstrate their irritability, a favorite property of eighteenth-century science brought to prominence by Albrecht von Haller. In this case, irritability signifies the ability to contract in reaction to a stimulus. That this plant exhibits this ability is significant because many naturalists of the century denied it to the entirety of the vegetable world. Upon receiving Whately’s account and recognizing its significance immediately, Withering attempts to replicate the findings, but to no avail. Remarkably, however, he gives Whately the benefit of doubt, likely made easier by the fact that Whately’s colleague, Gardom, corroborates the findings, which Withering prints in his book. Gardom describes the carnivorous sundew as follows: “On Mr. Whately’s centrically pressing with a pin other leaves, yet in their natural and expanded form, we observed a remarkable sudden and elastic spring of the leaves, so as to become inverted upwards, and as it were encircling the pin, which evidently showed the method by which the fly came into its embarrassing situation” (p. 333).

Withering also calls attention to the work of the eminent German botanist, Albrecht Wilhelm Roth, whose contributions to the science of botany are consistently underestimated. In his Beiträge zur Botanik (1782), Roth devotes an entire chapter to the Drosera as the ideal experimental subject for the investigation of the irritability of leaves. Roth, like Whately, notices a dead insect in each of the closed leaves: “With this I came to the thought, whether this plant, which seemed to have some similarity with the Dionaea Muscipula, did not also possess a similar irritable property as the Dionaea? This discovery was quite pleasing to me, since no observations on the irritability of the leaves of these plants were yet known” (pp. 65—6). Roth goes on to conduct experiments to determine the nature of this irritability and draw conclusions about the Drosera.

In his discussion of Drosera, Roth mentions another plant, well known for its irritability, that is, Dionaea muscipula or the Venus flytrap. Nearly every discussion of the sundew includes at least some reference to the flytrap, since both plants had the remarkable ability of capturing insects. Capturing insects, however, does not mean eating insects. While I entitled this section, “Plants That Eat Flesh,” the plant’s carnivorous nature was by no means a foregone conclusion. In Darwin’s description, for instance, he explains the Drosera’s actions as a system of defense against insects, making no mention of the possible nutrients gained from digesting them. Roth also acknowledges this possibility, but thinks that the matter cannot yet be decided one way or another. One author in favor of the carnivorous hypothesis is John Ellis, who was the first naturalist to publish on the Venus flytrap’s irritable properties in 1769. He describes the plant as possessing a machine to catch food in its leaves. His short piece is written as an open letter to Linnæus, beginning with the clever line, “I know that every discovery in nature is a treat to you; but in this you will have a feast” (p. 37).

Ellis’ss letter has another significance. Although it may introduce “a newly-discovered sensitive plant,” the letter serves as an appendix to his main work: Directions for bringing over seeds and plants, from the East-Indies and other distant countries, in a state of vegetation: together with a catalogue of such foreign plants as are worthy of being encouraged in our American colonies, for the purposes of medicine, agriculture, and commerce. The title, though long by today’s standards was common in the eighteenth century, conveys the place of Dionaea muscipula in the colonial history of Britain. Ellis’s concerns are many, but he is mainly interested in how the seeds obtained in the East (and elsewhere) can be safely returned to Britain in a fertile state. To this end, he describes a bevy of hardware (that is, different kinds of cases complete with diagrams), the pros and cons of several techniques, and a host of tips gained from experience to ensure that the vast effort and time spent in acquiring and transporting seeds would not amount to nil. His work is as much about importing new species from afar as it is growing British species abroad; that is, the transportation of plants is always a two-way street. It was, after all, the invention of the Wardian case in the nineteenth century that would allow the tea plant’s introduction to India and Cinchona’s introduction to Kew Gardens in England from South America and afterwards to India.

Fascination with carnivorous plants continues today, with entire botanical societies devoted to these plants. This fascination is one unlikely to abate, and for good reason. In a recent article, “The Venus Flytrap Dionaea muscipula Counts Prey-Induced Action Potentials to Induce Sodium Uptake,” Jennifer Böhm et al. argue that a moving object must trip the mechanosensors twice before the trap will first shut, another two times in order for the plant to release jasmonic acid, and three additional times for the release of prey-degrading hydrolases. The latter two processes aid in the digestion of the prey. It is thought that so many triggers are required at each stage, so that the plant does not waste energy on stimuli that are not nutritious. In other words, the Venus flytrap counts the struggles of its prey, ensuring that its meal is, in fact, truly flesh.

Illustration of the Venus Flytrap (1803)
Illustration of the Venus Flytrap

—from P. J. Redouté’s Jardin de la Malmaison

A Sketch from The Landscape, a Didactic Poem. Addressed to R. P. Knight, Esq.  (1794)

Well have the votaries of the Muses been called an irritable race. They have the qualities of the Sensitive Plant, or rather those of the Dionaea Muscipula, and woe be to the critical fly which dares to fix upon one of their leaves.*

*The leaves of the Dionaea Muscipula, or Venus’s fly trap, are armed with sharp spines. The unlucky insect who ventures on this irritable plant is immediately enclosed and pierced on every side. See a particular account of it in Darwin’s Loves of the Plants.

—from the Advertisement of a work in critique of Richard Payne Knight’s poem, The Landscape, (p. i)

Illustration of the Venus Flytrap (1769)
Illustration of the Venus Flytrap

—from John Ellis’ss “A Botanical Description of the Dionaea Muscipula”

Thomas Moore’s “Fragments of a Journal to G. M. Esq.”  (1806)

Sentiment, George, I’ll talk, when I’ve got any,
And Botany—
Oh! And Linnæus has made such a prig o’ me,
Cases I’ll find of such polygamy,
Under every bush,
As would make the “shy curcuma8” blush;
Vice under every name and shape,
From adulterous gardens to fields of rape!
I’ll send you some Dionaea Muscipula,
And, into Bartram’s book if you dip, you’ll a
Pretty and florid description find of
This “ludicrous, lobed, carnivorous, kind of—9”
The Lord deliver us,
Think of a vegetable being “carnivorous!”
And, George, be sure
I’ll treat you too, like Liancourt10,
(Nor thou be risible)
With the views, so striking and romantic,
Which one might have of the Atlantic,
If it were visible.

8 “Curcuma, cold and shy.” Darwin.

9 “Observed likewise in these savannas abundance of the ludicrous Dionaea Muscipula.” Bartram’s Travels in North America. For his description of this “carnivorous vegetable,” see Introduction, 13.

10 This philosophical Duke, describing the view from Mr. Jefferson’s house, says “The Atlantic might be seen, were it not for the greatness of the distance, which renders that prospect impossible.” See his Travels.

—from Epistles, Odes, and Other Poems (pp. 155—6)

Illustration of Cases for Vegetable Transport (1769)
Illustration of Cases for Vegetable Transport

—from John Ellis’ss “Directions for Bringing over Seeds and Plants”

Plants That Eat Flesh

The genus Drosera includes nearly 250 known species that all have something extraordinary in common: these plants eat flesh. Maria Jacson provides a vivid description of the process: “When an insect settles upon its leaves, it has been observed to bend them upward, and, by pointing all their globules of mucus to the center, completely to have entangled the depredator” (1811). Although Drosera is native to England and, in fact, to every continent except Antarctica, its ability to ensnare insects was not observed and recorded until 1780. Around this time, however, several scientists reported similar findings.

In England, this task falls to the surgeon, Mr. Whately (Darwin spells it “Wheatly”), who sends his report to William Withering, one of England’s most popular botanists. Withering includes the account in the second edition of his bestselling book An Arrangement of British British Plants (1787). According to Withering, Mr. Whately observed that inside of every curled leaf of the Drosera lays an insect. Whately conducts experiments on the leaves, pressing a pin to them to demonstrate their irritability, a favorite property of eighteenth-century science brought to prominence by Albrecht von Haller. In this case, irritability signifies the ability to contract in reaction to a stimulus. That this plant exhibits this ability is significant because many naturalists of the century denied it to the entirety of the vegetable world. Upon receiving Whately’s account and recognizing its significance immediately, Withering attempts to replicate the findings, but to no avail. Remarkably, however, he gives Whately the benefit of doubt, likely made easier by the fact that Whately’s colleague, Gardom, corroborates the findings, which Withering prints in his book. Gardom describes the carnivorous sundew as follows: “On Mr. Whately’s centrically pressing with a pin other leaves, yet in their natural and expanded form, we observed a remarkable sudden and elastic spring of the leaves, so as to become inverted upwards, and as it were encircling the pin, which evidently showed the method by which the fly came into its embarrassing situation” (p. 333).

Withering also calls attention to the work of the eminent German botanist, Albrecht Wilhelm Roth, whose contributions to the science of botany are consistently underestimated. In his Beiträge zur Botanik (1782), Roth devotes an entire chapter to the Drosera as the ideal experimental subject for the investigation of the irritability of leaves. Roth, like Whately, notices a dead insect in each of the closed leaves: “With this I came to the thought, whether this plant, which seemed to have some similarity with the Dionaea Muscipula, did not also possess a similar irritable property as the Dionaea? This discovery was quite pleasing to me, since no observations on the irritability of the leaves of these plants were yet known” (pp. 65—6). Roth goes on to conduct experiments to determine the nature of this irritability and draw conclusions about the Drosera.

In his discussion of Drosera, Roth mentions another plant, well known for its irritability, that is, Dionaea muscipula or the Venus flytrap. Nearly every discussion of the sundew includes at least some reference to the flytrap, since both plants had the remarkable ability of capturing insects. Capturing insects, however, does not mean eating insects. While I entitled this section, “Plants That Eat Flesh,” the plant’s carnivorous nature was by no means a foregone conclusion. In Darwin’s description, for instance, he explains the Drosera’s actions as a system of defense against insects, making no mention of the possible nutrients gained from digesting them. Roth also acknowledges this possibility, but thinks that the matter cannot yet be decided one way or another. One author in favor of the carnivorous hypothesis is John Ellis, who was the first naturalist to publish on the Venus flytrap’s irritable properties in 1769. He describes the plant as possessing a machine to catch food in its leaves. His short piece is written as an open letter to Linnæus, beginning with the clever line, “I know that every discovery in nature is a treat to you; but in this you will have a feast” (p. 37).

Ellis’ss letter has another significance. Although it may introduce “a newly-discovered sensitive plant,” the letter serves as an appendix to his main work: Directions for bringing over seeds and plants, from the East-Indies and other distant countries, in a state of vegetation: together with a catalogue of such foreign plants as are worthy of being encouraged in our American colonies, for the purposes of medicine, agriculture, and commerce. The title, though long by today’s standards was common in the eighteenth century, conveys the place of Dionaea muscipula in the colonial history of Britain. Ellis’s concerns are many, but he is mainly interested in how the seeds obtained in the East (and elsewhere) can be safely returned to Britain in a fertile state. To this end, he describes a bevy of hardware (that is, different kinds of cases complete with diagrams), the pros and cons of several techniques, and a host of tips gained from experience to ensure that the vast effort and time spent in acquiring and transporting seeds would not amount to nil. His work is as much about importing new species from afar as it is growing British species abroad; that is, the transportation of plants is always a two-way street. It was, after all, the invention of the Wardian case in the nineteenth century that would allow the tea plant’s introduction to India and Cinchona’s introduction to Kew Gardens in England from South America and afterwards to India.

Fascination with carnivorous plants continues today, with entire botanical societies devoted to these plants. This fascination is one unlikely to abate, and for good reason. In a recent article, “The Venus Flytrap Dionaea muscipula Counts Prey-Induced Action Potentials to Induce Sodium Uptake,” Jennifer Böhm et al. argue that a moving object must trip the mechanosensors twice before the trap will first shut, another two times in order for the plant to release jasmonic acid, and three additional times for the release of prey-degrading hydrolases. The latter two processes aid in the digestion of the prey. It is thought that so many triggers are required at each stage, so that the plant does not waste energy on stimuli that are not nutritious. In other words, the Venus flytrap counts the struggles of its prey, ensuring that its meal is, in fact, truly flesh.

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Illustration of Dionaea muscipula (vol. 20, 1803)
Illustration of the Venus Flytrap

—from S. T. Edwards’ Curtis’s Botanical Magazine

Taxonomy

Linnæan Classification

Class: 5. Pentandria (Five Males)
Order: 5. Pentagynia (Five Females)
Genus: Drosera
Species: Drosera rotundifolia

Modern Classification

Class: Equisetopsida C. Agardh
Subclass: Magnoliidae Novák ex Takht.
Super-
order
Caryophyllanae Takht.
Order: Caryophyllales Juss.
ex Bercht. & J. Presl
Family: Droseraceae Salisb.
Genus: Drosera L.
Species: Drosera rotundifolia L.
Charlotte Smith’s Beachy Head  (1807)

But, when with Spring’s return the green blades rise
Amid the russet heath, the household live
Joint tenants of the waste throughout the day,
And often, from her nest, among the swamps,
Where the gemm’d sun-dew grows, or fring’d buck-bean,
They scare the plover, that with plaintive cries
Flutters, as sorely wounded, down the wind.
Rude, and but just remov’d from the savage life
Is the rough dweller among the scenes like these,
(Scenes all unlike the poet’s fabling dreams
Describing Arcady)—But he is free....

“Where the gemm’d sun-dew grows, or fring’d buck-bean,
They scare the plover—”
Sun-dew.—Drosera rotundifolia.
Buck-bean.—Menyanthes trifoliatum.
Plover.—Tringa vanellus.

pp. 14—5

American Bog Garden (1807)
Illustration of the American Bog Garden

—from R. J. Thornton’s Temple of Flora

William Bartram’s
Travels Through North and South Carolina  (1792)

But whether the insects caught in their leaves, and which dissolve and mix with the fluid, serve for aliment or support to these kinds of plants, is doubtful. All the Sarracenias are insect catchers, and so is the Drossea [sic] rotundifolia.

But admirable are the properties of the extraordinary Dionaea muscipula! A great extent on each side of that serpentine rivulet is occupied by those sportive vegetables—let us advance to the spot in which nature has seated them. Astonishing production! see the incarnate lobes expanding, how gay and sportive they appear! ready on the spring to entrap incautious deluded insects! what artifice! there behold one of the leaves just closed upon a struggling fly; another has gotten a worm; its hold is sure, its prey can never escape—carnivorous vegetable! Can we after viewing this object, hesitate a moment to confess, that vegetable beings are endued with some sensible faculties or attributes, similar to those that dignify animal nature; they are organical, living, and self-moving bodies, for we see here, in this plant, motion and volition.

(pp. xiii—xiv)

Illustration of Cases for Vegetable Transport (1769)
Illustration of Cases for Vegetable Transport

—from John Ellis’ss “Directions for Bringing over Seeds and Plants”

Continue the Exhibition

Next Species:

Lamb of Tartary (Cibotium barometz)

See it in the LuEsther Mertz Library
  • J. W. Weinmann, Phytanthoza iconographia (1745)
  • Carl Linnæus, Species plantarum (1753)
  • Elizabeth Blackwell, Herbarium Blackwellianum (1773)
  • Pierre Bulliard, Herbier de la France (1784)
  • William Bartram, Travels through North and South Carolina (1791)
  • Erasmus Darwin, The Botanic Garden (1791)
  • G. C. Oeder, Flora danica (1792)
  • William Withering, An Arrangement of British Plants (1796)
  • D. L. Oskamp et al. Afbeeldingen der Artseny-Gewassen (1800)
  • P. J. Redouté, Jardin de la Malmaison (1803)
  • Robert John Thornton, Temple of Flora (1807)
  • Susannah Gibson, Animal, Vegetable, Mineral? (2015)
  • Richard Mabey, The Cabaret of Plants (2016)