Largest sundew

Of cosmopolitan distribution, sundews are carnivorous plants, famous for capturing and digesting insects and other small invertebrates, trapping them upon glistening drops of dew-like mucus present at the tips of mucus-secreting tentacles present on their leaves. The largest species of sundew is Drosera erythrogyne, a climbing species endemic to Western Australia, which produces a lengthy scrambling stem that can grow to 3 m (9 ft 10 in) long. However, the carnivorous traps of this plant are only about 1 cm (0.4 in) across. The sundew with the largest trapping leaves, meanwhile, is the king sundew (D. regia), a plant of tiny range in South Africa. This plant’s leaves are up to 40 cm (1 ft 4 in) long, and 1.2 cm (0.5 in) wide. While enormous, this plant feasts on tiny prey such as small insects. The Australian and New Zealand fork-leafed sundew (D. binata) has a number of varieties and forms. The leaves have a long, slender base (petiole) and a multiply divided leaf that consists of many thin segments. The petiole on some plants can be as long as 1 m (3 ft 3 in), and the multiply divided leaf can be as large as 60 cm (2 ft) in total extent.

Approximately 50 per cent of all sundew species (of which there are almost 200) occur in Australia, but D. erythogyne, the largest of all, surprisingly remained undescribed by science until as recently as 1992. Only three species occur in Europe, and one of North America's survives in Alaska. Their closest relatives are also carnivorous plants – the very famous Venus flytrap, and the less familiar waterwheel plant.