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Pink Death. Drosera filiformis, Thread-leaved Sundew, Hortus Botanicus, Amterdam, The Netherlands

Here's a Sundew from North America. It has long and slender, erect 'tendrils', filaments covered with tiny hairs or trichomes with globules of sticky exudate at their ends. They serve to trap small insects and also contain digestive enzymes that soon reduce insects to plant nutrients. Then it'll have energy to produce these pretty pink flowers.

Our 'elegant species', as writes Frederick Traugott Pursh (1774-1820), was seen by him near Tuckerton, New Jersey, about 1805. He describes it 1813/1814, too late for Constantine Samuel Raffinesque (1783-1840) to have read it. Usually Raffinesque quotes Pursh if the latter saw a specific plant before he did, but he saw this Drosera around 1803/1804 also in New Jersey and described it in 1808, well before Pursh. Hence its find is attributed to him.

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Uploaded on July 12, 2025
Taken on July 12, 2025