Varying flower colors in Drosera

Fernando Rivadavia Lopes (ferndriv@usp.br)
Fri, 11 Aug 1995 11:43:28 -0500 (CDT)

> > PS I just had a _Drosera rotundifolia_ (from Bob Maheraj's Canadian
> > seed)
> > flower. It is bright pink. All the local (Irish) ones here are
> > white. Does anyone know if North American are usualy pink or does
> > it vary?

> I really should know, darn it! I've grown this one for years now and I
> can only say I'm pretty sure they are white. Some people said they had
> pink flowers but thought it was a stess related phenomenon. While on
> this subject, are there any red flowered D. intermedia?

> There are pink flowering specimens in N. America, though
> they're less common than the usual white ones. I've seen my
> own normally white-flowering (Welsh,) plants come pink this
> year under strong artificial light, and Fernando reports the
> same phenomenon in D. communis (I think it was communis?) i
> think someone mentioned aliciae (or was it adelae?) pulling a
> similar stunt a few months ago.

Yes it was D.communis and a related new species I call
D.sp."Emas" which have varying flower colors, apparently as a result of
one or more ecological factors. Well, other native Drosera show it too,
but it's mostly variations from a light lilac to a dark pink-lilac,
while in D.communis it varies from white to lilac and in D.sp."Emas" it
varies from light-pink to white to lilac.
I remember reading that D.intermedia can have pinkish flowers in
northern South America, in Guyana or Surinam, I'm not sure. I think I saw
this in a paper on the Droseraceae of the Guyana Highlands. I think I've
mentioned that this species has been discovered on the coast of SE
Brazil. For years it had been confused by local taxonomists with
D.capillaris var.brasiliensis, which has light-pink flowers. I've a paper
on the Droseraceae of Rio de Janeiro where the author shows D.intermedia
as D.capillaris. I'll take a look to see what it says for these
D.intermedia, if they're white or pink-flowered.

Fernando Rivadavia
Sao Paulo, Brazil