Droseraceae

Sundews are carnivorous non-woody plants with a rosette of basal leaves, their blades covered in sticky glandular hairs for catching insects. Mainly found in bogs, fens, ditches, seepages and wet soils.

Flowers small, white or sometimes tinged with pink, each producing both pollen and seeds, radially symmetrical. Flowers arranged in a long cyme or raceme on one side of a leafless stalk that uncurls at the tip as each flower matures from lowermost upward. The flowers only open fully in sunshine, and only a single flower is usually in bloom on each plant at one time. Sepals 5, slightly fused, overlapping at edges. Petals usually 5, separate, mostly broadest above the middle, rolled, with the margins overlapping. Stamens usually 5, as many as the petals, their stalks separate or slightly fused at the base, the pollen-producing structures at their tips and their pollen white or orange. Sepals, petals and stamens persistent after withering. Carpels usually three, fused; ovary located above point of attachment of the other flower parts (superior); styles separate, 3 but often appearing as 6, since each is often divided from the tip into 2 equal parts. Fruit a chambered capsule, mostly three-valved; seeds often tapered at both ends, reddish-brown to black, the surface with rounded projections, craters or fine parallel longitudinal lines. Plantlets often are produced vegetatively from flowers, detached leaves or detached winter buds and disperse readily with water flow.

Leaves all basal, spreading to ascending, reddish, simple, stalked; the blades round, spoon-shaped or linear, and covered with long tentacle-like hairs with glands at the tips. Shape of mature leaves is one of most useful features for identifying the various sundew species. In late summer, a cluster of curled immature overwintering leaf buds forms at the centre of the rosette and these give rise to a new rosette in the spring. Stipules present in New Brunswick species, attached to the leaf stalk or nearly free, the edges often unevenly fringed with hair-like projections.

Small insects become caught in the sticky dew-like secretion produced by the glands, the hairs temporarily bend inward to press the insect against the leaf blade, and the leaf also curves to partially surround the insect, which becomes a source of nitrogen as it is digested.