Drosera coalara — Vorstman's Guide to the Carnivorous Plants

No photograph of this species under a Creative Commons licence or in the public domain is in the guide yet.

Identification

No separate description of the plant could be found in the accessible sources: measurements, flower colour and flowering time are therefore left empty. If the synonymy with D. citrina is correct, this is a small, perennial, fibrous-rooted pygmy sundew with a rosette a few centimetres across, a cone of silvery stipules at its heart and lemon to greenish yellow flowers. The distinguishing features Lowrie and Conran used to separate D. coalara are found only in the original description.

Similar species

The comparison that matters is with Drosera citrina and its yellow- or white-flowered relatives Drosera chrysochila and Drosera nivea. Because the boundaries between these names are disputed, in the field one can at most establish that a plant belongs to this group; assigning it to D. coalara requires the characters of the original description.

The trap and how it works

Like all pygmy sundews the plant catches with an active flypaper trap: small leaves with stalked glands carrying a sticky droplet in which springtails, mites and small flies become stuck. The tentacles then bend towards the prey and secrete digestive enzymes.

Habitat and ecology

Nothing about the habitat of D. coalara itself is recorded in the accessible sources. Codes D1 and B5 are taken from D. citrina, which grows on yellow sand in open kwongan heath, and are therefore provisional.

Distribution and elevation

Endemic to the south-west of Western Australia; the name has been included in the state plant census since 2018. A distribution could not be established for this guide because the FloraBase profile was not reachable at the time of writing.

Recorded (one-degree cells)

Distribution based solely on records at GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility), not on TDWG regions — those are often far larger than the actual range. The light halo is the area around a record, the dark core the record itself. The darker square is the only one-degree cell — roughly a hundred and ten kilometres — in which the species has been recorded, from all GBIF records. This is coarser than for most species because hardly any record of this plant carries an accurate coordinate. It shows where the species has been seen, not where it occurs: an empty square means nothing.

Forms and variation

There are no subspecies or varieties. The main question is whether D. coalara stands as a species in its own right or merges with D. citrina. This guide takes no position and lists the name as it appears in the base list.

Where and when to see it

Anyone finding a yellow-flowered pygmy sundew on the sandplains north of Perth should photograph it carefully (rosette from above, stipules, flower from above and the side) and record it as D. citrina in the broad sense, noting that it may be D. coalara.

Conservation status

The IUCN code in this guide is Least Concern (LC). Not in CITES. The taxonomic status is uncertain: some overviews treat the name as a synonym of Drosera citrina. The original description (Lowrie 2014) is the only good source and could not be consulted for this guide; the FloraBase profile was not reachable. This text has therefore deliberately been kept short.

Scientific name

Drosera coalara | Lowrie & Conran, 2013

Described by Lowrie & Conran, in "Carnivorous Plants of Australia Magnum Opus", volume 3, p. 1269 (title page December 2013, final completion per the index 19 March 2014 — hence 2013/2014). Western Australia, north-east of Badgingarra. Collected by Allen Lowrie & John G. Conran (collection no. 3556) on 11 September 2007; holotype at PERTH, isotypes at AD and MEL. The meaning of the name could not be established.

World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP), via Plants of the World Online (POWO), Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.