Drosera rotundifolia - Drosera rotundifolia. Long-leaved (English) dewberry - D. longifoiia (angtica). Family Droseraceae.
The Latin Drosera means "watered by dew" in Greek. It is as figuratively characteristic of these small and quite peculiar plants as the Russian "dewlap". And indeed, all dewdrops have leaves pubescent with long red cilia, and at the end of each of them is a drop of sap. And the droplets glisten in the sun, attracting small insects. Americans even call dewberry the gem weed. So marvelous are the dewlaps that W. Г. Rubtsov introduced them as if they were in a fairy tale:
In "Kashcheyev" kingdom on a mossy bump
Honey leaves lie in a rosette.
Their juice, like dewdrops, glistens in the sun,
"The mosquito will die a glorious death.
Round-leaved dewberry can be seen on almost every bump of upper sphagnum bogs. The round-leaved dewberry is very small. Round dewdrop leaves smaller than a penny are gathered in a rosette and cling to the sphagnum carpet. And if the moss is brown or red, it is difficult to see the round-leaved dewberry: its leaves appear red because of red cilia and merge with sphagnum moss (Fig. 20), especially since they are covered by a layer of bog grasses and shrubs from above. And this little one is a predator, feeding on insect meat. Transparent droplets on the leaves of dewberry are not water, but sticky and thick mucus, which contains substances that resemble the stomach juice of animals. The shiny dewdrops attract the insect, but once it sits on a leaf, it's gone. No matter how hard the prisoner struggles, he can't break free from the trap. Upon sensing prey, the cilia and then the leaf margin of the round-leaved dewberry curl up and encompass it. At the same time, formic acid and pepsin-like substances appear in the droplets of dewberry juice (in a calm state, the juice on the cilia is just a sticky substance). The victim is quickly digested, everything useful is extracted from it and in 2-3 days only the chitinous shell remains. The leaf of the round-leaved dewberry unfurls, the light remains deflated
:fig1:
by the wind - and again the plant is ready to take a new portion of "meat" food.
Hey, brother mosquito, watch out!
Don't sit on a dewberry leaf, you'll have to kiss your life goodbye:
Once you sit down, you'll never get up again.
Д. Kaigorodov
Long-leaved dewberry is slightly larger than round-leaved dewberry and grows in swampy places of lowland and transitional bogs, sometimes forming continuous thickets. The leaves of the long-leaved dewberry are elongated and otherwise similar to the round-leaved dewberry. Both dewclaws bloom in July and August. Small white florets, gathered in lopsided brush, are clearly visible on sphagnum carpet and even among grasses. "Her pedicels are spirally wrapped at first... With infinite grace the stem draws out an immortal curve. But then it straightens up. And opens buds on five stitches: pure-white five-petal corolla appears to the world. It looks strange: at the bottom, insect-eating dewberry leaves with their mangled victims, and at the top, pretty flowers pollinated by the same insects. One can feel the inner duality of the dewlap plant - its contradictory fold" (Yu. Linnick).
It's not just in the composition of the mucus that dewlaps resemble animals. The bending of the cilia toward the prey resembles the animal's response to an irritation - a nerve impulse. Ч. Darwin, who conducted numerous experiments with the dewlap, wrote, "These marvelous plants may be called extremely witty animals." It turned out, for example, that the plant dewlap not only feels the weight of prey, but is able to "smell" it. If you drop a dry blade of grass on a dewberry leaf, there is no cilia reaction. But when a live victim is caught, it is captured very quickly.
But will the round-leaved dewberry plant die if it does not receive protein animal food? Such experiments have also been done. And it turns out, no, it won't. The round-leaved dewlap plant, like all flowering plants, obtains proteins from carbon dioxide and soil minerals by photosynthesizing. But by eating animal proteins, the dewberry plant becomes stronger, grows faster, and produces more seeds.
Both dewlaps are very widely distributed. They are common in bogs throughout Europe (except for the Black Sea region); they are found in Western and Eastern Siberia, the Caucasus and the Far East.
Dewberries have medicinal properties and are recognized by scientific medicine. For medicinal purposes, the whole plant of round-leaved dewberry is collected during flowering. But with their very small size, their mass is negligible. According to V. Ф. Yudina, 0 can be collected per m2.9-1.4 g of round-leaved dewberry and 5-13 g of long-leaved dewberry (in terms of air-dry weight).
Dewberry leaves contain antibiotic plumbagin, peptinizing enzyme drozerone, mineral salts, organic acids, coloring and tannins, anthocyanin pigment, vitamin C. Extracts from this herb are the basis of the preparations droserine and drosan, which are used to treat whooping cough, laryngitis, tracheobronchitis and bronchial asthma.
The antispasmodic and antibacterial action of this drug explains its soothing effect in coughs. Used dewberry round-leaved and in the treatment of metabolic diseases, and even in homeopathy (with whooping cough, laryngitis, tuberculosis). Studies have shown that diaphoretic fungi and bacteria are suppressed by plumbagin, while tuberculosis bacteria, streptococci are suppressed by naphthaquinone. It has been found out that in small doses plumbagin excites, and in large doses it causes convulsions and even paralysis.
Widely known this plant and in folk medicine. Complex collections of dewberry round-leaved, plantain and yvan-da-marya are recommended for coughs. Use dewberry round-leaved as diaphoretic for colds and headaches, as an expectorant for coughs (together with thyme), as a diuretic, with nervous diseases, vision impairment, atherosclerosis, hypertension, diarrhea. Fresh juice of dewberry round-leaved remove warts, calluses, freckles.
The enzyme characteristics of dewberry and greasewood, another insectivorous plant, have been known since ancient times. Throwing dewberry leaves into steamed milk produced a specific cheese with an original smell and taste. And here's how D. wrote about it. Kaigorodov at the end of the last century: "If you take fresh leaves of fatty and pour them with steam milk, then soon such milk curdles into a special, peculiar, thick and quite dense mass. It has long been a favorite food of the Laplanders and is called (in their language) sätmiolk, which means nourishing milk. And if you take it as a leaven and pour fresh milk over it in large quantities, it will also curdle." The leaves of round-leaved dewberry were also used as a food dye, coloring foods red and yellow.
A few other insectivorous plants are found in the marshes. Among them are greasers and vesicles. The most common are the common honeysuckle and the medium vesicle. Aldrovanda vesicularis is less common. What they all have in common is their ability to get extra protein animal food. But outwardly they are different.
Some (dewlaps and greasewood) have roots and lead an immobile life; others (vesicles, Aldrovanda) float freely in the water column. All of these plants have chlorophyll in their leaves and are capable of photosynthesis. Each of these plants lives in a different ecological environment and has different adaptations for catching small animals..
