Drosera spatulata ("Komosengoke")

Japanese name: コモウセンゴケ （小毛氈苔）
Scientific name: Drosera spatulata

[Overview]
A perennial 5–15 cm tall, growing in sunny, acidic, nutrient-poor wetlands and on moist bare clay ground.
It is a carnivorous plant.
The leaves grow from the base in large numbers in a rosette; including the stalk they are obovate, 1–2 cm long and about 0.3 cm wide, the base gradually narrows, and the boundary between stalk and blade is indistinct.
The leaf stalk is broad and about twice as long as the leaf.
The stipules are dry, membranous and deeply 3-lobed.
The leaves are pale green or tinged with red, and the surface is covered with long crimson glandular hairs.
The glandular hairs secrete a very sticky mucilage containing digestive enzymes, catching insects and absorbing nutrients from them.
A raceme at the tip of the flower stalk bears short glandular hairs, and its end is coiled like a bracken fiddlehead.
The flowers are pale pink and 5-petaled, with about 10 borne on one side of the inflorescence; each flower withers in a day.
White-flowered plants are also seen in the Ryukyu Islands.
The sepals are oblong to lanceolate, about 0.3 cm long.
The petals wither but remain until the fruiting stage.
The fruit is a globose capsule about 1.5 mm in diameter, shorter than the sepals.

[Cultivation]
Propagate from seed.
It prefers a sunny, well-ventilated place, and should be protected from freezing in winter.
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.
To keep the soil always moist, 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.

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