Drops. Drosera binata, Fork-Leaved Sundew, and a Hoverfly, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
A miserable drizzly day here in Amsterdam but there's always something to be seen in the Hortus Botanicus so off I went.
Here in the small patch devoted to Carnivorous Plants - though there was no Sun at all - I saw this very wet Fork-Leaved Sundew. The inset shows you whence the name given it by that intrepid naturalist Jacques Julien Houtou de Labillardière (1755-1834). He was one of the scientists attached to Bruni d'Entrecasteaux's expedition sent to Oceania by France in 1791 to explore and to find the lost and ill-fated La Pérouse Expedition (1785-not yet returned in 2016...). They didn't. But he and his men were avid collectors of naturalia. In northern Tasmania, then still called Van Diemen's Land, Labillardière found this Sundew in early 1793, and he described it in his flora published after his return to France.
The photo shows the nectar glands which secrete those little drops of sweet mucilage. It attracts insects and then traps them in stickiness. Trying to escape, the insect's struggles activate other filaments of those glands, which secrete digestive liquids that dissolve its soft body tissues. The mixture is then sucked in for our plants' nutrition.
Not only was the morning raindrop-wet for me myself but also for, I think, a Hoverfly, but it's come to a Happy End at least for our Sundew! Me? I tore myself away from the garden for a vegetarian lunch...
Drops. Drosera binata, Fork-Leaved Sundew, and a Hoverfly, Hortus Botanicus, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
A miserable drizzly day here in Amsterdam but there's always something to be seen in the Hortus Botanicus so off I went.
Here in the small patch devoted to Carnivorous Plants - though there was no Sun at all - I saw this very wet Fork-Leaved Sundew. The inset shows you whence the name given it by that intrepid naturalist Jacques Julien Houtou de Labillardière (1755-1834). He was one of the scientists attached to Bruni d'Entrecasteaux's expedition sent to Oceania by France in 1791 to explore and to find the lost and ill-fated La Pérouse Expedition (1785-not yet returned in 2016...). They didn't. But he and his men were avid collectors of naturalia. In northern Tasmania, then still called Van Diemen's Land, Labillardière found this Sundew in early 1793, and he described it in his flora published after his return to France.
The photo shows the nectar glands which secrete those little drops of sweet mucilage. It attracts insects and then traps them in stickiness. Trying to escape, the insect's struggles activate other filaments of those glands, which secrete digestive liquids that dissolve its soft body tissues. The mixture is then sucked in for our plants' nutrition.
Not only was the morning raindrop-wet for me myself but also for, I think, a Hoverfly, but it's come to a Happy End at least for our Sundew! Me? I tore myself away from the garden for a vegetarian lunch...