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Rapid Prey Slinging Sundews It always looks sensational when the rapid catapults of some sundews fling their prey into the sticky tentacles of the trapping leaf in a matter of seconds or even milliseconds. The largest of the catapult-flypaper traps known to date, Drosera glanduligera, is even faster than the famous Venus flytrap. In the past, who would have thought a sundew could do that? The exciting research into these fast trapping movements in the genus Drosera only began in the 1980s with the still rather sedate Drosera burmannii / D. sessilifolia. We show with impressive recordings how research into the fast catapults progressed. Even today there are still surprises. In this film we show all known rapid catapult-flypaper traps and present video evidence of the tentacle movement of Drosera australis, a further rapid pygmy Drosera.

How to film sundew snap-tentacles. When filming sundew snap-tentacles, some simple measures can be helpful to prepare the recording correctly and to avoid disturbing shaking by unnecessary poking of the tentacle heads. That needs some understanding on their different response times and motion patterns. Since many years, we experimented with catapulting sundews and summarized our experiences now in this brief movie description, providing hints how to proceed with moderate and rapid catapult-flypaper traps. The idea for this film came up after some requests on Facebook how to film such tentacle motions. Good luck when filming your Drosera.

Hello, has anyone of you guys ever ordered from this website http://www.droseragemmae.com/? I see it's located in the US, so I was wondering whether it's be a deal buying something from them or a risk of receiving half-dead stuff. Thanks!

Hello there... it's two years I'm experiencing great problems with peat-based substrate for Pygmy Drosera. I mean... while the specimens I grow in peat:perlite with a layer of pure sand on top grow as they are supposed to, along with those kept in pure red loam + sand, those in peat : sand : perlite look just awful. I've really begun to think that these plants can't stand the peaty soil around their feet. Anybody of you has ever had this problem? (I keep my plants in a greenhouse in Summer and move them inside when it's too cold in Winter, in an unheated room with a lamp). Here are some pics, sorry for the quality, but I think they're enough to get what I mean.

Amazing results: Pygmy sundews capture minute prey like springtails with rapid catapult action. Our experiments for this film (English subtitles) show that Drosera glanduligera is not longer the only sundew with a catapult-flypaper trapping mechanism. Also the snap-tentacles of several pygmy Drosera act with the speed of a closing Venus flytrap and fling walking prey from the periphery of the plant onto its sticky leaf. Therefore they turn out to be actually comparable with the amazing Drosera glanduligera, however, their catapults are multifunctional and possess a mechanism to avoid unessential movement: Like Venus's Flytrap. Under our microscope we examined 22 Drosera and received surprising results. Furthermore we were able to film many pygmy Drosera in situ on field trips with Allen Lowrie, Greg Bourke and Kirstie Wulf (1991 & 2001), providing these shots now for the first time on YouTube. We are happy to introduce Gideon Lim from Malaysia, who showed the first video of the rapid snap-tentacles of D. pygmaea "New Zealand, all green" on the internet even in 2014. In addition, we recommend a visit at "Andy Landgraf Makrofotografie" on Flickr and on Facebook. Andy kindly provided some of his impressive macro-shots for our film, to feature some more minute prey and predators in "Pygmyland".

Dear all, I spent most of the previous days repotting my sarracenia. While I was doing this I had plenty of time taking a look at other plants growing in my "wintergarden". Here are some shots of those. The first one is a D. barbigera which will still need a few days to start flowering: A bit more advanced: D. miniata from Coomallo A highlight in each spring: the D. citrina flowering season. Interestingly, so far only the several years old plants flower whereas the one year old plants are only starting their growing season yet. Finally, the D. cistiflora from Nieuwoudtville (again) which I showed to you before. This is a different plant in flower now. Here you can see something I already noticed on the other plant: the flower stalk is not arranged terminally on the stem as it usually is the case for this species. Instead, the plant continues to grow from the uppermost leaf axil. I did not observe such growth in any of my other D. cistiflora plants so far. I hope you like the pictures. More will follow soon. Cheers Dieter

Dear all, I hope you had a good start into 2013! I made some pictures of a few pygmy drosera early today which I would like to share. I will start with tow forms of D. leucoblasta. The first one is the reddish Brookton Form: If you look carefully, you will see that the plants are getting ready for the next growth season. Not really a surprise as we had quite a warm december. Here is the type form for comparison. At the moment it is more golden green in colour allthough it getting the same conditions as the Brookton form above: Very different from the D. leucoblasta are the D. pulchella. Most of the summer leaves died back and there are just a few smaller leaves. Here is a couple of different forms: Finally, some D. spilos shots. I hope you like them! Cheers Dieter