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Drosera rotundifolia
Also called Roundleaf sundew, Common Sundew, Round Leaf Sundew, Dew Plant
Round-leaved sundew is a small carnivorous perennial of bogs, marshes and fens that traps insects on sticky red-tipped leaf hairs. It needs wet, acidic, nutrient-poor conditions and a cold winter dormancy to thrive.
Drosera rotundifolia, the round-leaved sundew, roundleaf sundew, or common sundew, is a species of carnivorous flowering plant that grows in bogs, marshes and fens. One of the most widespread sundew species, it has a circumboreal distribution, being found in almost all of Europe, all of Siberia, large parts of North America, Korea and Japan but is also found as far south as eastern China, the Philippines, and into the Southern Hemisphere in New Guinea.
D. rotundifolia is one of the temperate species of Drosera cultivated by growers interested in carnivorous plants. To be grown successfully, plants of the wild species must be given a substantial period of winter dormancy during which they form hibernacula. The cultivar D. rotundifolia 'Charles Darwin' can be grown more successfully without a period of dormancy.
In North America, the common sundew is found in all parts of Canada except the Canadian Prairies and the tundra regions, southern Alaska, the Pacific Northwest, and along the Appalachian Mountains south to Georgia and Louisiana. In the western United States, roundleaf sundew is found in mountain fens as far south as the Sierra Nevada of California and in a disjunct cluster of fen occurrences in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. In the eastern United States, the sundew plant is found in parts stretching from Nova Scotia down the coast into Georgia. In addition to Georgia, plants are now being seen in Alabama and Mississippi. West of the Mississippi River, plants are located along the Pacific coast from Alaska down the coast to California, with new plants detected in Iowa, Minnesota and in two recently recorded sites in Gunnison County, Colorado and Bottineau County, North Dakota.
According to D.H. Paper, et al., Drosera rotundifolia plant extracts show great efficacy as an anti-inflammatory and antispasmodic, more so than D. madagascariensis, as a result of the flavonoids such as hyperoside, quercetin and isoquercetin, but not the naphthoquinones present in the extracts. The flavonoids are thought to affect the M3 muscarinic receptors in smooth muscle, causing the antispasmodic effects. Ellagic acid in D. rotundifolia extracts has also been shown to have antiangiogenic effects.
Text excerpted from the Wikipedia article Drosera rotundifolia by its contributors, under CC BY-SA 4.0; the excerpts and the care summary drawn from them are shared under the same licence.
The care summary was written by AI (Claude, Anthropic) from the sources on this page, with general growing knowledge where they are silent. Check before relying on it.
Life form, climate and native range: World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (CC BY 3.0), reformatted; see Plants of the World Online.
