Drosera pilosa

A sundew with a puzzling distribution: it occurs in tropical West Africa (Guinea, Sierra Leone, Cameroon) and the highlands of East and Central Africa (Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Burundi, DR Congo), with a gap of nearly 2900 km between the two ranges. No one quite knows why it is absent from the vast stretch in between. It is strictly a montane species, found only above 2000 m.

In the mountains where it grows, D. pilosa inhabits peat bogs, marshes and seepage sites, high-altitude wetlands where thin soils stay damp year-round. These are remote, under-collected places, which partly explains why the species remains so poorly known.

Small flat rosettes that look a lot like the far more common D. burkeana at first glance. The giveaway is the leaf stalks: D. pilosa has densely hairy stalks on both surfaces, while D. burkeana's are smooth on top. The flower stalk is also hairy rather than glandular, and the flowers are pink to reddish-purple rather than white. This is the large form from Zambia, very rarely available in cultivation.