Sundew flowers

This morning I got a rare treat – I saw an open sundew flower. In fact, I caught 3 separate plants with open flowers. Sundew blooms are very short lived – usually closing up again within a couple hours – so I was excited to take pictures. However, my phone's camera, while decent, isn't super great at close-up shots, mostly because it lacks manual focus. I ended up getting a couple decent shots, but I'll need to invest in a nicer camera if I want to take close-ups more regularly.

The one that first caught my eye was one I'd not yet seen open at all, Drosera tokaiensis.

Drosera tokaiensis flower. The color was hard to capture, but it's quite nice.

Blooming D. tokaiensis in the group pot. Everybody's just hangin' out.

I have decided, by the way, that this is in fact D. tokaiensis, having seen an open flower and compared it to photos online. My favorite part of this bloom was the color – it's a lovely rich pink, in contrast to the other blooms, which are more of a pale lilac.

Also open was the Drosera aliciae. The seedpods on this stalk are very round, which is pretty pleasing.

Drosera aliciae flower. I tried to get a closer shot of the naughty bits but couldn't get it in focus.

It's funny to me how long the stalk on the D. aliciae scape is compared to the height of the plant.

The last bloom was, of course, on my Drosera capensis, which is throwing up another flower stalk, just because.

Drosera capensis flower. I feel bad about how commonplace this feels to me now.

Three bloom stalks on D. capensis.

I've noticed that since I've been feeding this plant a bit less the new flower stalk is thinner and less robust overall. I guess I need to get back to feeding. Oh well.

By the time I got home from running errands 3 hours later the D. tokaiensis bloom was entirely closed, and the others were nearly done themselves. That's how it is with sundew flowers!