Description:

• Herbaceous, insectivorous, glanduliferous annuals or deciduous perennials; few, axillary, positively geotropic shoots or pseudo-roots are formed from stem, becoming swollen with reserve foods and densely covered (except tip) with long 'root hairs'; true roots absent (suppressed during germination)
• Stems aerial, rhizomatous or suppressed, annual or perennial (apical tissue persisting as a turion)
• Leaves basal and rosulate and/or caulescent and alternate; lamina simple, bearing various types of glandular hairs; vernation folded (viz. apical part of petiole reflexed so that upper face of lamina touches petiole) or circinnate with blade rolled inwards; petioles often persistent and reflexed or confluent with lamina; stipules well developed, reduced or 0, membranous, often laciniate
• Inflorescence scapose, axillary or terminal (at least primarily), cymose, helicoid or dichasial, often reduced to 1 or 2 flowers; cyme nodding beyond open flower (viz. buds situated below open flower)
• Flowers usually opening one at a time in bright sunlight, sometimes for a few hours only; pollination often autogamous, seldom cleistogamous
• Calyx: lobes ovate, occasionally slightly dentate
• Petals usually obovate or spathulate, sometimes unguiculate, white, pink, purple, yellow or red, sometimes with a dark base, marcescent and coalescing to form a cap over capsule
• Stamens 5, upper part of filament and connective often swollen dorsally, rhomboidal, causing locules to diverge below
• Ovary with 3 placentas; styles 3, free, simple or often forked from base, sometimes bifurcate or multifid at stigmatic apex
• Capsule loculicidally 3-valved, enclosed in persistent calyx
• Seeds black, ovoid or fusiform, with outer integument extended on both sides; testa smooth, reticulate or warty
• x = 10 (aneuploids, polyploidy)

Nomenclature:

• Drosera L.
  • Linnaeus: 281 (1753)
  • Linnaeus: 136 (1754)
  • Sonder: 75 (1860)
  • Hooker: 661 (1865)
  • Drude: 270 (1891)
  • Diels: 61 (1906)
  • Phillips: 359 (1951)
  • Laundon: 1 (1959)
  • Roessler: P45:1 (1966) [only one species]
  • Obermeyer: 189 (1970)
  • Laundon: 64 (1978)
  • Cheek: 738 (1987)
  • Bennett & Cheek: 375 (1990)
  • Laundon & Basto: 6 (1993)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Species ± 80, cosmopolitan with a concentration in the southern hemisphere
• Southern Africa: Species 20, widespread