Pretty Deceit

Pretty Deceit

Spatulate-leafed Sundew
(Drosera intermedia)

This bog-dwelling plant supplements its nutrition-poor diet by luring and trapping insects with its sticky, glandular leaf hairs.
Once a hapless insect has touched the sticky droplets, the “tentacles” wrap slowly, inexorably around its body and
enzymes eventually digest the prey.

Description:
-A short-lived, insectivorous perennial herb of open bogs.
-Leaves a basal rosette. Blades 2-3 times as long as wide; petioles smooth, ¾”2” long. Upper surface of blades covered with reddish, glandular hairs tipped with a sticky, glutinous secretion that traps insects.
-Flowers white, several borne on one side of a leafless stalk, the stalk growing from side of plant base and curving upward to 8” tall.
-Sepals 5, 3mm-4mm long
-Petals 5, white, 4mm-5mm long
-Fruit a dry capsule containing many seeds
-Seed tiny, red brown, and covered with small bumps, to 1mm long.

Identification: Unmistakable as a Sundew; nothing else like it in the North Country.
Distinguished from the other North Country Sundew, the Round Leaf Sundew (Drosera rotundifolia) by the oblong, rather than round, leaf.
Distribution: Circumboreal; Newfoundland to Minnesota, Montana, and Idaho.
Habitat: Low places in open bogs, sandy shores; often in shallow water.
Very well adapted to the nutrient deficient “soils” of northern bogs.

Sunset Bay bog,
Lake Muskoka
Ontario, Canada

Nikon D40X with 105 mm Micro-Nikkor,
from kayak

Pretty Deceit belongs to the following groups:

Wildflowers of North America - 3/day Available for sale as

Greeting Cards and Matted Prints