Bug eating plant …

At first glance, these small innocuous plants could easily be overlooked, in fact, I thought initially they were a type of buzzy weed. They have almost unnoticeable little pink flowers on top.

On closer inspection, I was surprised to find this is one of Tasmania’s carnivorous plants – I didn’t even know we had them!

Drosera auriculata, commonly called the Tall sundew is an erect, tuberous species in the carnivorous plant genus Drosera. It is similar in shape and stature to Drosera gracilis and Drosera gunniana, and generally has pink flowers. It can be distinguished from other species in the Drosera peltata complex by having glabrous sepals, which are instead hairy in other members of the complex.
Source: Tall sundew (Carnivorous plants of Tasmania) · iNaturalist Australia (ala.org.au)

Bugs for dinner!

These images were taken over about two weeks waiting for the flowers to open and catching it’s “eating” process. They are one of the first flowering plants to bounce back after the big forest burn off shown in the previous post. So far I’ve observed quite a few of them in a fairly limited area, I find them quite fascinating.

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