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Updated: April 30, 2025
He even observed that the disk of the Drosera-leaf itself often became concave and enveloped the prey. These facts, although mentioned now and then in some succeeding works, were generally forgotten, except that of the adhesion of small insects to the leaves of sundews, which must have been observed in every generation.
While Dionaea is as local in habitation as it is singular in structure and habits, the Droseras or sundews are widely diffused over the world and numerous in species. The two whose captivating habits have attracted attention abound in bogs all around the northern hemisphere. That flies are caught by them is a matter of common observation; but this was thought to be purely accidental.
If the Venus's Fly-trap stood alone, it would be doubly marvelous first, on account of its carnivorous propensities, and then as constituting a real anomaly in organic Nature, to which nothing leads up. Before acquiescing in such a conclusion, the modern naturalist would scrutinize its relatives. Now, the nearest relatives of our vegetable wonder are the sundews.
For plants that are not parasitic, these, especially the sundews, have much less than the ordinary amount of chlorophyll that is, of the universal leaf-green upon which the formation of organic matter out of inorganic materials depends. These take it instead of making it, to a certain extent. What is the bearing of these remarkable adaptations and operations upon doctrines of evolution?
Under such conditions the cunning sundews and the ruthless pitcher-plants set deceptive honey traps for unsuspecting insects, which they catch and kill, absorbing and using up the protoplasmic contents of their bodies, by way of manure, to supply their quota of nitrogenous material.
Darwin turned his attention to other groups of plants; and, first, to the bladderworts, which have no near kinship with the sundews, but, like the aquatic representative of that family, are provided with bladdery sacs, under water.
And similar transformations have without doubt taken place in the pitcher plants of America. Observers in the Cape of Good Hope have noted two plants Roridula dentata and Biblys gigantea, which are evidently following in the footsteps of the sundews, and may be expected in the fulness of years to be their equal partners in crime.
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