''Drosera gigantea'', the giant sundew, is an erect perennialtuberous species in the
carnivorous plant
Carnivorous plants are plants that derive some or most of their nutrients from trapping and consuming animals or protozoans
Protozoa (singular: protozoan or protozoon; alternative plural: protozoans) are a group of single-celled eukaryot ...
genus '' Drosera'' that is endemic to Western Australia. It grows in sandy soils at the margins of swamps and near granite outcrops along the Western Australian coast from Albany north to just south of Geraldton. ''D. gigantea'' produces small shield-shaped leaves along many lateral branches that look like a small tree. Individual plants can grow up to tall. Because of its tall, tree-like form, it is considered one of the largest ''Drosera'' species. It is also easily cultivated and enjoys damp, humid conditions often provided in greenhouses.D'Amato, Peter. 1998. '' The Savage Garden: Cultivating Carnivorous Plants''. Ten Speed Press: Berkeley, California. pp. 157. White flowers emerge from August to November. The red tubers of this species can grow to be in diameter and may be a metre below ground.Rice, Barry. 2009 The tuberous erect & scrambling ''Drosera'' The Carnivorous Plant FAQ. Accessed online: 12 August 2009.
''D. gigantea'' was first described and named by
John Lindley
John Lindley FRS (5 February 1799 – 1 November 1865) was an English botanist, gardener and orchidologist.
Early years
Born in Catton, near Norwich, England, John Lindley was one of four children of George and Mary Lindley. George Lindley w ...
in his 1839 ''
A sketch of the vegetation of the Swan River Colony
"A Sketch of the Vegetation of the Swan River Colony", also known by its standard botanical abbreviation ''Sketch Veg. Swan R.'', is an 1839 article by John Lindley on the flora of the Swan River Colony. Nearly 300 new species were published in it, ...
''. In 1992,
N. G. Marchant
Neville Graeme Marchant (born 1939) is a retired Western Australian botanist. He was formerly the Director of the Western Australian Herbarium.
Marchant began working for the Western Australian Herbarium at the age of 15, as a laboratory assist ...
and
Allen Lowrie
Allen Lowrie (10 October 1948 - 30 August 2021) was a Western Australian botanist. He was recognised for his expertise on the genera '' Drosera'' and ''Stylidium
''Stylidium'' (also known as triggerplants or trigger plants) is a genus of dicot ...
described a new
subspecies
In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...
, ''D. gigantea'' subsp. ''geniculata'', that grows to tall in black sandy soils near Perth and to its south.Jan Schlauer disagreed with Marchant and Lowrie's decision to give the new taxon a rank of subspecies and thus published a new combination of the taxon at the rank of variety in a 1996 issue of the '' Carnivorous Plant Newsletter''. He argued that subspecies should be reserved for those occasions where
allopatric
Allopatric speciation () – also referred to as geographic speciation, vicariant speciation, or its earlier name the dumbbell model – is a mode of speciation that occurs when biological populations become geographically isolated from ...
, or geographically isolated,
speciation
Speciation is the evolutionary process by which populations evolve to become distinct species. The biologist Orator F. Cook coined the term in 1906 for cladogenesis, the splitting of lineages, as opposed to anagenesis, phyletic evolution within ...
occurred and varieties are best used in cases where
sympatric speciation
Sympatric speciation is the evolution of a new species from a surviving ancestral species while both continue to inhabit the same geographic region. In evolutionary biology and biogeography, sympatric and sympatry are terms referring to organi ...
is suspected.Schlauer, J. 1996 A dichotomous key to the genus ''Drosera'' L. (Droseraceae) ''Carnivorous Plant Newsletter'', 25(3): 67-88. Others disagree with this assessment, as Western Australia's online flora database, FloraBase, lists the varietal taxon (''D. gigantea'' var. ''geniculata'' (N.G.Marchant & Lowrie) Schlauer) as a synonym of the subspecies.
The shoots of ''D. gigantea'' have been found to contain the rare secondary metabolites naphthoquinone,
glucoside
A glucoside is a glycoside that is derived from glucose. Glucosides are common in plants, but rare in animals. Glucose is produced when a glucoside is hydrolysed by purely chemical means, or decomposed by fermentation or enzymes.
The name was o ...
plumbagin
Plumbagin or 5-hydroxy-2-methyl-1,4-naphthoquinone is an organic compound with the chemical formula . It is regarded as a toxin and it is genotoxic and mutagenic.
Plumbagin is a yellow dye,