Drosera katangensis — Vorstman's Guide to the Carnivorous Plants

No photograph of this species under a Creative Commons licence or in the public domain is in the guide yet.

Identification

A small rosetted sundew with glandular trapping leaves and a scape from the centre of the rosette. A detailed, reliable description with measurements was not available for this text; the measurement fields are left empty. For identification Taton's original description, supplemented by herbarium material, is the appropriate source.

Similar species

The same region holds D. bequaertii, D. madagascariensis, D. affinis and D. elongata. The stem-forming species are easy to separate; against the similarly small D. bequaertii field identification is uncertain.

The trap and how it works

An active flypaper trap: stalked glands with sticky droplets catch small insects, after which the tentacles bend towards the prey and the glands secrete digestive enzymes.

Habitat and ecology

Seasonally wet, open places in grassland and savanna on the plateaux of south-eastern Congo (W7, W4, B6). Precise habitat data are not given here.

Distribution and elevation

Endemic to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in the south-east of the country (the former Katanga province). Altitudinal limits are not given.

Recorded (one-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 5 one-degree squares — roughly a hundred and ten kilometres — in which the species has been recorded, from all GBIF records. This is coarser than for most species because hardly any record of this plant carries an accurate coordinate: the locality of poached species is obscured at source. At this scale that obscuring disappears into the noise. The cells show where it has been seen, not where it occurs: an empty square means nothing.

Forms and variation

No varieties are known. The species is known from very few collections and recent fieldwork is largely lacking; both its delimitation and the current state of its populations are uncertain.

Where and when to see it

This species is not a suitable target for a field visit. Anyone who happens to find it should report the record confidentially to a herbarium or to the IUCN specialist group and not make the site public. Do not collect plants or seed.

Conservation status

Assessed on the IUCN Red List as Critically Endangered; not in CITES. Its tiny known range lies in a region where large-scale mining, expanding towns and agriculture and changes in the fire regime put the wet grasslands under heavy pressure.

Scientific name

Drosera katangensis | Taton, 1945

Described by Taton in 1945, in Bulletin du Jardin botanique de l'État à Bruxelles, volume 17, p. 309. "Congo Belg." (Belgian Congo); the species is endemic to Haut-Katanga, Democratic Republic of Congo, and so far known from only a single 1912 collection. From the suffix -ensis ("from") — "of/from Katanga" (the Katanga region/province of the DRC, matching its known distribution).

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