Description:

• Herbaceous, insectivorous, glanduliferous annuals or perennials or floating aquatics (Aldrovanda)
• Roots well developed or usually true roots suppressed, parts of stem becoming rhizoids (absent in Aldrovanda)
• Stems aerial, rhizomatous, tuberous or suppressed
• Leaves basal, rosulate and/or caulescent and alternate (verticillate in Aldrovanda), with irritable gland-tipped hairs (Drosera) or an active trap (Aldrovanda); venation folded or circinnate; lamina simple or differentiated (Aldrovanda), covered with glandular excrescences such as tentacles, sensitive bristles, stipitate and sensitive glands; stipules intra-axillary, well developed, reduced or 0
• Inflorescence axillary or terminal, often scapose cymose, sometimes reduced to 1 or 2 flowers
• Flowers bisexual, usually regular, hypogynous
• Calyx with 5 lobes connate at base, imbricate, persistent
• Petals 5, free, sometimes cohering at first, imbricate, marcescent
• Stamens 5; filaments free; anthers opening by longitudinal slits, extrorse; pollen forming tetrads
• Ovary superior, 1-locular, of 3-5 carpels; ovules many (rarely few), anatropous; on parietal placentas; styles 3-5, usually free, rarely connate, simple or variously divided; stigma apical
• Fruit a loculicidal capsule, enclosed in persistent calyx, usually thin-walled, dehiscing in 3-5 sections or rarely irregularly
• Seeds 3-many, fusiform; embryo short, straight; endosperm copious, rich in starch, oil and protein

Nomenclature:

• Droseraceae
  • Sonder: 75 (1860)
  • Drude: 261 (1891)
  • Diels: 56 (1906)
  • Phillips: 358 (1951)
  • Obermeyer: 187 (1970)
  • Laundon: 62 (1978)
  • Laundon & Basto: 6 (1993)
  • Mabberley: 242 (1997)

Distribution & Notes:

• Global: Genera 4, 3 genera monotypic, species ± 100, cosmopolitan
• Southern Africa: Genera 2, species 21

References:

• DIELS, L. 1906. Droseraceae. Das Pflanzenreich 4, 112
• DRUDE, O. 1891. Droseraceae. Die natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien 3,2
• LAUNDON, J.R. 1978. Droseraceae. Flora zambesiaca 4
• LAUNDON, J.R. & BASTO, M.F.P. 1993. Droseraceae. Flora de Moçambique 63
• MABBERLEY, D.J. 1997. Droseraceae. The plant-book, edn 2. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
• OBERMEYER, A.A. 1970. Droseraceae. Flora of southern Africa 13
• PHILLIPS, E.P. 1951. The genera of South African flowering plants, edn 2. Memoirs of the Botanical Survey of South Africa 25
• SONDER, O.W. 1860. Droseraceae. Flora capensis 1

Resources:

• Key to Droseraceae genera

• Droseraceae genera: