Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.

  • noun Any of various insectivorous plants of the genus Drosera, growing in wet areas and having leaves covered with sticky hairs that trap insects.

from The Century Dictionary.

  • noun A plant of the genus Drosera.
  • noun Any plant of the order Droseraceæ. Lindley.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.

  • noun (Bot.) Any plant of the genus Drosera, low bog plants whose leaves are beset with pediceled glands which secrete a viscid fluid that glitters like dewdrops and attracts and detains insects. After an insect is caught, the glands curve inward like tentacles and the leaf digests it. Called also lustwort.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.

  • noun Any of a group of insectivorous plants in the genus Drosera that catch insects by sticky droplets ("dew") at the end of hairs on the leafs and grow in boggy ground all over the world.

from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.

  • noun any of various bog plants of the genus Drosera having leaves covered with sticky hairs that trap and digest insects; cosmopolitan in distribution

Etymologies

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

[Obsolete Dutch sondauw (translation of Latin rōs sōlis, dew of the sun) : son, sun (from Middle Dutch sonne; see sāwel- in Indo-European roots) + dauw, dew (from Middle Dutch dau; see dheu- in Indo-European roots).]

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

sun +‎ dew

Support

Help support Wordnik (and make this page ad-free) by adopting the word sundew.

Examples

  • From pillows of sphagnum that over millennia have built up this extraordinary place, carmine glitter of round-leaved sundew attracts the eye, slowly digesting its captured insect-life.

    Country diary: Tregaron, Ceredigon 2011

  • This terrarium contains examples of the Australian lance-leafed sundew (Drosera adelae) and the delicate triggerplant (Stylidium debile), both of which are carnivorous.

    Fantastic Fiction at KGB » Blog Archive » Carnivorous Plant Terrarium 2008

  • Out with Barry Goater watching tiny flies struggling in the clutches of the science-fiction sundew plants on Dyke Heath, we also clocked two new birds to add to the ninety species already listed in the log: a pair of hobbies, the male perched on a stump, and a spotted flycatcher.

    Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

  • As we crossed the Station Heath on our way back, I checked the damp peat for sundew plants, and they too were still there, leaves unfurled so an unwary insect might trigger their honeyed, deliquescent tentacles.

    Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

  • Out with Barry Goater watching tiny flies struggling in the clutches of the science-fiction sundew plants on Dyke Heath, we also clocked two new birds to add to the ninety species already listed in the log: a pair of hobbies, the male perched on a stump, and a spotted flycatcher.

    Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

  • As we crossed the Station Heath on our way back, I checked the damp peat for sundew plants, and they too were still there, leaves unfurled so an unwary insect might trigger their honeyed, deliquescent tentacles.

    Wildwood Roger Deakin 2009

  • Wet meadows between rock outcrops include grasses, sedges, mosses, pitcher plant Saracenia purpurea, sundew Drosera sp. and purple fringed orchid Habenaria psycodes.

    Gros Morne National Park, Canada 2008

  • The savanna understory includes an endemic insectivorous sundew (Drosera indica).

    Sumba deciduous forests 2008

  • Bogs support some of the most interesting plants in the United States (like the carnivorous sundew), and provide habitat to animals threatened by human encroachment.

    Bog 2007

  • Two Heliamphoras pulchella and minor ‘Chiamanta’, two pots of Utricularia nelumbifolia, a bromeliad that has a utric plantlet in it, and a sundew:

    Mennonites, those Goth kids, and al Qaeda 2007

Comments

Log in or sign up to get involved in the conversation. It's quick and easy.