Typical costal fynbos habitat of D. ramentacea at the base of Table Mountain Nature Reserve.
Can you spot the two plantlets of D. ramentacea amongst surrounding ericoid vegetation?
Drosera ramentacea is not a bog plant of soaking wet soils at all, but grows in rather dry, very sandy peat soils over white Table Mountain Sandstone. In September, when we visited some locations of this plant, the soil was very dry in the upper part, and started getting just moist from about 10 cm below the soil surface. D. ramentacea is well known for producing some of the longest tap roots of all sundews (and so do D. hilaris, D. cuneifolia and D. glabripes, which all grow in exactly the same type of habitat), reaching more than 50 cm in length, in order to reach the subsoil moisture of its natural habitats. Those of you who are successfully growing this species will perhaps agree in that the roots of D. ramentacea are quickly reaching to the bottom of even the tallest pots ;).
It is from those thick roots that the plant sprouts again after regular bush fires, or after years of exceptional drought. Note the little green plantlet sprouting from the roots to the left of the main stem of this one.
D. ramentacea is a winter growing, summer dormant sundew of the Cape area. However it is not fully dying back to its roots (like the geophyte D. cistiflora for example; plants which survive a dormancy as subterraneous organs are called “geophytes”), but forming a dense hairy resting bud at the top of its stem (comparable to the hibernacula of the temperate Drosera species). This bud is surviving the dry South African summer, and resumes regrowth with the start of the winter rainfall again. Plants surviving a dormancy as a dormant resting bud above soil surface are called “chasmophytes”. The same strategy is followed by the related species D. hilaris, D. ericgreenii and D. glabripes, all which are sommer dormant chasmophytes.
D. ramentacea can form tall stems up to 1 m in height (given support by nearby vegetation), however the plants are usually much smaller. We found a lot of old dead desiccated stems with fresh juvenile growth from the roots, most likely caused by some dry years.
In the wild, D. ramentacea is often growing in the shelter of some shrub or rocks, and the roots are often formed right into even the narrowest rock cavities, where some moisture accumulates.
D. ramentacea can be easily told apart from D. capensis (a plant of wetter habitats; see different topic) by the presence of long, white hairs which are spreading from the petiole (hairs in D. capensis are much shorter and more or less appressed, and quite often deciduous, i.e. only present on young leaves).
Moreover, the lamina of D. ramentacea is wider but shorter than it is in all forms of D. capensis, and stipules of both species are different as well. In general, the scape of almost all individuals of D. ramentacea is dichotomously forked, whereas D. capensis has a simple raceme (which can, however, be forked in robust plants in cultivation. Especially plants of D. capensis from Baineskloof tend to have forked scapes)
All the best,
Andreas
PS:
Fernando sitting in typical fynbos habitat of D. ramentacea ( “Boooring! Olha como o cerrado em Brasil! “ ;);))
