Drosera moorei — Vorstman's Guide to the Carnivorous Plants

Identification

A perennial that each year produces from an underground tuber a glabrous, scrambling or climbing stem 12 to 35 cm long. Along the stem sit small, circular, peltate trapping leaves on stalks. The inflorescence carries two to ten yellow flowers that open in September and October. A glabrous stem with yellow flowers, by granite outcrops inland, is a good combination of field characters. We did not find precise leaf and flower measurements in any source consulted.

Similar species

Drosera moorei was long regarded as a variety and later a subspecies of D. subhirtella, also a yellow-flowered climbing tuberous sundew; the glabrous stem separates it from that and other relatives with hairy stems. D. intricata, also glabrous and yellow-flowered, grows in wet hollows nearer the coast. Habitat and distribution thus help with identification.

The trap and how it works

An active flypaper trap. The round leaf blades carry marginal tentacles with sticky droplets that catch small flying insects. After a catch the tentacles bend to the centre of the leaf and digestive enzymes are secreted. The sticky leaves at the same time help the stem hold on to surrounding plants.

Habitat and ecology

Sandy loam by granite outcrops (R3, D1), often among shrubs and low vegetation (B5) where the stem finds support. The margins of granite outcrops receive extra water running off the rock and are therefore, in the dry interior, precisely the places where tuberous sundews can grow. The plant survives the summer as a tuber.

Distribution and elevation

Endemic to south-west Australia, inland between Southern Cross and Ravensthorpe: the eastern Wheatbelt and the transition to the dry Goldfields.

Recorded (quarter-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 cells are 25 quarter-degree squares in which the species has actually been recorded, from GBIF and only from records accurate to within five kilometres. They show where it has been seen, not where it occurs: an empty square means nothing. For threatened species this layer never goes finer than a whole degree, deliberately.

Forms and variation

Ludwig Diels described the plant in 1906 as a variety of D. subhirtella. Neville Marchant made it a subspecies in 1982, and Allen Lowrie raised it to species in 1999. No subspecies or varieties of D. moorei itself are recognised. The species belongs to section Ergaleium.

Where and when to see it

Go in September to granite outcrops in the eastern Wheatbelt, many of which lie along the road south from Southern Cross. Search the edge of the rock where the shrubs begin: the yellow flowers betray the plant. The outcrops are often the only native vegetation left in a landscape of fields; tread carefully.

Conservation status

On the global IUCN Red List the species is listed as Least Concern (LC). It is not listed in CITES. Granite outcrops in the Wheatbelt are threatened by grazing, weeds and salinisation of the surrounding landscape, but many are protected as nature reserves.

Scientific name

Drosera moorei | (Diels) Lowrie, 1999

The name was originally published as Drosera subhirtella var. moorei by Ludwig Diels, in his 1906 monograph of the Droseraceae (in Engler's Das Pflanzenreich). Allen Lowrie raised the taxon to species rank as Drosera moorei (Diels) Lowrie, in Nuytsia, volume 13(1), p. 80 (1999). No reliable type-specimen record with collection details (locality, collector, date) could be found; a precise type locality could not be established with certainty. The name honours Spencer Le Marchant Moore (1850–1931), a British botanist attached to the Department of Botany of the British Museum, who collected plants in Western Australia. It is thus an eponym.

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