Droseraceae is a small family of carnivorous plants consisting of three genera with 180 species.
Summary
[ hide ]
- 1 Features
- 1 Floral biology
- 2 Distribution and habitat
- 3 Species of the Family Droseraceae
- 4 Economic importance
- 5 Sources
characteristics
- Size: herbaceous, annual or perennial.
- Leaves: circinate prefoliation, alternate, rare whorled, often arranged in basal rosette, provided or not with stipules and almost always rich in glomeruli and glandular hairs containing proteolytic substances.
- Flowers: solitary or in tops; perfect; hypogynous.
- Perianth: calyx, 4-8 sepals; corolla, 4-8 petals.
- Androceo: stamens, 4-20 free or connate to the base.
- Gynecium: super ovary, 3-5 carpels, soldered, unilocular; 3-∞, basal or parietal eggs; styles 3-5.
- Fruit: loculicidal capsule, rare indehiscent.
- Seed: numerous, with endosperm, small and basal embryo.
Floral biology
Usually pollinated by little specialized insects. They are generally autogamous and sometimes cleistogamous. The dispersion occurs by air or by water (Judd, 1999; Izco, 1998).
Distribution and habitat
It consists of 4 genres: Drosera, it is cosmopolitan; Drosophillum, distributed in the Iberian Peninsula; Aldrovanda , from southern Eurasia , to Australia and tropical Africa and Dionaea , in the southern United States . Usually grown in peaty and swampy soils, Aldrovanda is aquatic.
Species of the family Droseraceae
It has 4 genera and about 100 species. Only one genus Drosera with three species lives in Argentina, D. brevifolia , D. communis and D.uniflora ( Zuloaga et al ., 1999). They are annual, marsh plants that live in sandy, humid and acidic or peaty soils, often associated with Sphagnum. In Iberá there are two species; Drosera brevifolia and D. communis var. Eichl pauciflora. (Arbo, 2002).
Economic importance
Drosera intermedia and D. rotundifloia are used in folk medicine for their antitussive and antispasmodic properties, due to their high content of naphthoquinones, such as plumbagin and plumbagone, principles also with some antibacterial action and equally useful against warts (Izco, 1998).
This family features active type traps. Drosophillum and Drosera have leaves covered with long, red hairs , with glands at the ends, mobile in Drosera, which trap insects and digest them by proteolytic enzymes and ribonucleases.
In general, this process is reinforced by the action of bacterial flora that, in Drosophillum , was not found, perhaps, due to the antiseptic properties of formic acid that they also secrete.