Drosera
Drosera, which is commonly known as the sundews, is one of the largest genera of carnivorous plants, with at least 194 species. These members of the family Droseraceae lure, capture, and digest insects using stalked mucilaginous glands covering their leaf surfaces. The insects are used to supplement the poor mineral nutrition of the soil in which the plants grow. Various species, which vary greatly in size and form, are native to every continent except Antarctica.

Jan Wieneke · CC BY-SA 3.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Also called
- sundewPBDB
- Sits inside
- DroseraceaePBDB
- Diet
- "photoautotroph"PBDB, for Angiospermae
Time the record covers
At most 2.6 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 2.58 Mya and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Drosera on record, most of them in the Pleistocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
7 occurrences- Pleistocene100%
- Holoceneunder 1%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Drosera and its relatives
PleistoceneWhere Drosera and its relatives were recorded in the Pleistocene.
Found in the same rock
234 taxa- Apiaceae7 sites
- Asteraceae7 sites
- Poaceae7 sites
- Caryophyllaceae6 sites
- Cyperaceae6 sites
- Plantago6 sites
- Acacia5 sites
- Botryococcus5 sites
- Cyathea5 sites
- Eucalyptus5 sites
- Fabaceae5 sites
- Ilex5 sites
- Myriophyllum5 sites
- Myrtaceae5 sites
- Ranunculaceae5 sites
- Sphagnum5 sites
- Symplocos5 sites
- Agathis4 sites
- Araliaceae4 sites
- Araucariaceae4 sites
- Baculatisporites4 sites
- Casuarinaceae4 sites
- Chenopodiaceae4 sites
- Corymbia4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 7 sites for Drosera, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
2 references- Early Pleistocene vegetation change in upland south-eastern Australia4
- A Catalogue of Fossil Plants from India Part 6: Cenozoic (Quaternary) Palynology and Palaeobotany3
Each of the 7 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content2
Picture of Drosera
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Jan Wieneke
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
3D model
- Source
- Sketchfab
- Credit
- stephenandrewmalcolm
- Licence
- CC Attribution
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Drosera”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itDroseraceae through timeFormations of the PleistoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Linnaeus 1753