Roridula dentata and R. gorgonias, two South African plants that were formerly believed to be carnivorous, exhibit an extremely sticky exudate at the tips of secretory trichomes. Unlike the trapping mucilage of Droseraceae, it does not consist of acidic polysaccharides. The Roridula trapping glue was found to be a mutual solution of mainly dihydroxytriterpenoids, instead. All samples contain tw...

PREMISE OF THE STUDY We describe a field and laboratory workflow developed for plant phylotranscriptomic projects that involves cryogenic tissue collection in the field, RNA extraction and quality control, and library preparation. We also make recommendations for sample curation. METHODS AND RESULTS A total of 216 frozen tissue samples of Caryophyllales and other angiosperm taxa were collecte...

We review trapping mechanisms in the carnivorous flowering plant family Droseraceae (order Caryophyllales). Its members are generally known to attract, capture, retain and digest prey animals (mainly arthropods) with active snap-traps (Aldrovanda, Dionaea) or with active sticky flypaper traps (Drosera) and to absorb the resulting nutrients. Recent investigations revealed how the snap-traps of A...

The sundew genus Drosera consists of carnivorous plants with active flypaper traps and includes nearly 150 species distributed mainly in Australia, Africa, and South America, with some Northern Hemisphere species. In addition to confused intrageneric classification of Drosera, the intergeneric relationships among the Drosera and two other genera in the Droseraceae with snap traps, Dionaea and A...