tuberous-drosera.net --- Drosera intricata

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Drosera intricata

Drosera intricata is a scrambling or climbing plant up to 40 cm long. In my hands the plants most often just form a short stem with a single group of leaves as it can be seen in a picture below. Plants growing beyond that stage often start scrambling soon and are quite likely to flower. This species may develop tuber producing stolons from the leaf axils. D. intricata flowers will open for a few hours only in contrast to D. moorei, which will open its flowers for several days.
The tubers are white.

The three species D. intricata, D. moorei and D. subhirtella are very similar. They can be most easily differentiated once they flower (taken from Lowrie's publication):
D. moorei: stem and sepals glabrous
D. intricata: All plant parts (excluding the sepals) glabrous (see picture below)
D. subhirtella: All plant parts (excluding the lowermost section of stem, stamens, styles and petals) glandular


D. intricata tubers and non-adult plants.



D. intricata flower bud and flowers



D. intricata produces dropper roots from leaf axils when grown in humid conditions. Each dropper root can produce an additional tuber at its end. Once it touches the surface, the dropper stolons will thicken and grow several centimeter deep into the substrate. As you can imagine, it took a while to get all stolons out of the substrate to make the picture of the plants above. One of the stolons already has a small tuber attached. A few other species show a similar behaviour (D. gigantea, D. radicans), but this clone (TUB087) seems to be particularly effective in this respect. It once came as "D. aff. moorei, plants scrambling, 15 cm long, maintaining a 2 cm height off the soil surface, many leaves in groups of 3, flowers pale yellow, asexually producing numerous tubers on dropper roots from the axils of the leaves, tubers produced below soil pale yellow, tubers produced above soil red" from Allen Lowrie.

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