Sundews (Drosera) are propably the most diverse genus of carnivorous plants in the world, with more than 120 species world- wide.

Their leaves are arranged in a rosette, generally flat on the ground, and their surface is covered with hundreds of hairlike tentacles, at the end of which one is a red gland which produces a small, clear, glistening, sticky drop of dew.

A flying-by insect which foolishly mistakens the dew for nectar and lands on on a Sundew leaf, quickly discovers that the more it attempts to get unglued the more firmly it is held. In a matter of minutes the Sundew begins to secrete enzymes and acids which start to disolve its victim's body.  The glands then start to absorb the nutricious liquified insect. Yum.

There are two species of Sundew native to Texas, similar in appearance:

• Drosera capillaris, the Pink Sundew
  D. capillaris forms rosettes usually one to two inches across with spoon-shaped leaves.   The leaves are lime-green, and the hairlike tentacles red.  As the summer goes on and depending on how much sun they get, the leaves turn a deep red. A hard frost will kill the plants which return from seed.   The flowers are pink and show up in April.

• Drosera brevifolia, the Red Sundew
  This tiny sundew is hardly half an inch across, with wedge-shaped leaves.  The tentacles with the sticky dew go further down the leaf of the red sundew, than they do on the pink sundew leaves.  Unlike the pink sundew, the red sundew has distinct fuzzy glands on its tall flower stalk.   Like the pink sundew, it dies in the winter to return again in the Spring from seed, and it has almost the same range.

Both sundews commonly live side-by-side with Pitcher Plants, butterworts, and bladderworts in bogs and savannas and are native in at least Leon, Anderson, Robertson, Henderson, Angelina, Jasper, Tyler, Newton, Nacogdoches, and Wood Counties.   It is not unusual to see these two sundews carpet large areas, so thickly one cannot put their foot down without steping on tens of them, growing out of wet sand or long-fiber sphagnum, or just overflowing from a road-side ditch.