Drosera burmannii, the tropical sundew,^[1][2] is a small, compact species in the carnivorous plant genus Drosera. It normally spans only 2 cm (0.8 in) in diameter. It is one of the fastest trapping sundews as well, and its leaves can curl around an insect in only a few seconds, compared to the minutes or hours it takes other sundews to surround their prey. In nature, D. burmannii is an annual, but in cultivation, when grown indoors during the cold months, it can live for many years. Since D. burmannii is an annual, it produces large amounts of seed.^[3] Drosera burrmannii has been considered a powerful rubefacient in Hindu medicine.^[4]

Drosera burmannii is an herb that produces very short stems and leaves in a rosette. Each wedge-shaped leaf is typically 8–10 mm long and 5–6 mm wide. White flowers are produced in groups of 3 to 10 on 6–15 cm (2–6 in) tall racemose inflorescences, of which there can be one to three per plant.^[5]

It was first described by Johannes Burman in his 1737 publication on the flora of Ceylon. Burman used the species epithet zeylonensis, but the species was not formally published until 1794 when Martin Vahl named it in honor of Burman as Drosera burmanni (the species epithet is sometimes orthographically corrected to burmannii). In 1871 Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach described a new species, D. dietrichiana, which Ludwig Diels reduced to a variety of D. burmannii in his 1906 monograph of the Droseraceae. The variety was described as being a larger and more robust plant than D. burmannii var. burmannii. Both D. dietrichiana and the variety are now considered synonyms of D. burmannii.^[2][6]

See also

• List of Drosera species

References