Drosera Bulbosa Roots Revealed

​Greetings fellow Foxies,
A wet winter has enabled me to see the root structure of Drosera bulbosa/red-leaved sundew. I see it in water-gaining red soil areas in Foxes Lair and in moss beds on or around granite outcrops. Leaf colour varies from green to yellow and red, the latter due to nitrogen deficiency when plants are waterlogged or stressed.

In red clay loam

waterlogged location

They often occur in wet moss beds

Rosette sundews such as this,survive over summer as a fleshy root tuber. In winter a fleshy stem called a rhizome emerges and grows to the surface where it develops roots and leaves​. At the end of the season, the top withers and dies as nutrients are drawn back into the tuber. Daughter tubers may then be produced, as a base for new plants.
Due to their location, these plants are at risk of being washed away or snapped off by running water, which undermines them or breaks off clumps of moss containing them. A plant below, which snapped of at the surface has developed another tuber to find soil and make new roots.

soil has washed away from plant

plant snapped off at the base

rhizome emerging from snapped -off plant

Images below show plants that were washed out of the soil with roots and tuber intact. One had an emptied tuber as its resouces were used to produce a rhizome in search of soil

Plant with tuber and original rhizome

Secondary rhizome emerging from tuber

tuber exhausted to fuel rhizome growth