Long flower stems with white flower buds in above photo

   

Tiny plant, with leaves growing from a rosette at the base of the stems. Leaves are orbicular bearing fine glandular hairs, the hairs exuding a sticky drop at their tip. Typical leaf (excluding petiole) 5 mm by 5 mm. Has small white flowers in July, flowers 4 mm and less in diameter, I measured scapes to 23 cm long.

Lives in nitrogen-poor bogs in heavy forest. The plants eat small insects to provide them with the nitrogen which is lacking where it lives. When an insect becomes entangled in the hairs, the leaves bend inwards so that the insect comes into contact with fine, inner hairs. Enzymes are produced by the hairs which disolve the insect which is then absorbed by the leaf. Only the insect's exoskeleton remains which blow away when the leaf hairs uncurl to become erect again, ready for the next meal.

We have observed these Sundews prefer growing on small hummocks 15 cm to 30 cm above the waterline. We have seen them growing in the same bogs as its cousin D. anglica which seems to prefer living in sphagnum moss right at the level of the water.

D. rotundifolia is the most common of the three Drosera species which grow in Saskatchewan, fairly common to find them in bogs in the boreal forest.

The leaves of D. anglica are conspicuously more linear than those of D. rotundifolia.

The above photos were taken on June 29th in the Boreal forest about 400 km north of Regina, and July 16th and 22nd Duck Mountain Provincial Park, 300 km northeast of our home in Regina, SK .

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