Hello,

I found the time to edit some photos of my Australia CP trip again ;)



At this beautiful location near the “town” of Cranbrook (it’s actually just a few houses along a road ;)), carpets of Drosera ramellosa were covering the wet sandy soil.





The plants grew among grasses in partial shade, and were still covered by the morning dew. The night before had been extremely cold, down to 5°C. According to Allen Lowrie, occasional frost is common in this area, too.







Drosera ramellosa develops two stems with leaves (only very rarely one) and a bunch of flowers from a basal rosette of leaves. Even plants that do only bear one single stem can be distinguished from the related D. platypoda, which always flowers from the top of the stem. D. ramelossa, in contrast, always flowers from the basal rosette.



Drosera ramellosa is the only member of the D. stolonifera-complex that is not only self fertile, but even selfing regularly (autogamous)! Sometimes, the flowers do not even open, but self-pollinate cleistogamous. I did notice this in my cultivated plants already, and now observed this in plants in the wild, too.



Interestingly, the seed capsule of D. ramellosa is getting a reddish colouration while the seed is ripening. However, it’s a dry capsule when the seed is released, thus it’s not acting as a berry-like fruit for seed dispersal by animals.

All the best,

Andreas

Wow Andreas! Fantastic photographs and observations! Well done! - Rich

They look great! Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the pictures. Love them

Thanks for the pictures!!!!!

Thanks for the report! Great photos too!

-Max

Hi Andreas,

again very nice pictures, the landscape looks very interesting too.
Interesting that sometimes they are self-pollinating cleistogamous.

Thanks for sharing these pictures.

Best regards,

Dani

OMG....fantastic report!!! Thank you for sharing!

Hi Andreas,

Great place and report !! Very interesting that D.ramellosa
is self-fertile. Thanks for sharing them.

Iggy

Really cool, thanks Andreas!!


Best wishes,
Fernando Rivadavia

Nice report Andreas!

Only I have one comment: you (and Allen Lowrie) wrote that "Drosera ramellosa develops two stems with leaves (only very rarely one) and a bunch of flowers from a basal rosette of leaves."
But when I was looking through my photographs to prepare the EEE lecture I noticed this plant:

This single plant clearly has three stems !
Most of the plants are so densly packed that it is very hard to determine the actual number of stems per plant.
Another picture seems to show even a plant with 4 stems on a single plant!
So it seems that although most plants develop two stems, D. ramellosa plants can bear up to four stems.

John