Japanese name: モウセンゴケ（毛氈苔） Scientific name:Drosera rotundifolia
[Overview]
A perennial 6–20 cm tall, growing in sunny, acidic, nutrient-poor wetlands.
It is a carnivorous plant.
The leaves grow from the base in a rosette; they are obovate-orbicular and flattened, 0.5–1 cm long, and the base gradually narrows into a stalk.
The leaf surface is covered with long glandular hairs.
The glandular hairs secrete a very sticky mucilage containing digestive enzymes, catching insects and absorbing nutrients from them.
Until the nutrients are absorbed, the leaf curls around the prey.
A raceme at the tip of the flower stalk is coiled at its end like a bracken fiddlehead when young.
The flowers are white and 5-petaled, with several borne on one side of the inflorescence.
The fruit is an oblong capsule 0.4–0.5 cm long.
[Cultivation]
Propagate from seed or by division.
It prefers a sunny, well-ventilated place.
Planting in sphagnum moss alone is easy and works well, but a mixture of equal parts Kanuma soil, small-grain Akadama soil and peat moss can also be used.
Because it is a wetland plant, water by keeping the pot standing in water.
No fertilizer is particularly needed, and it is fine even if it is not fed insects.
If you do not intend to collect seed, cutting the flower stalk at the base once the inflorescence has bloomed halfway up keeps the plant from tiring.
