As the unfortunate crane fly discovered, however, the dew is more like glue. The more insects struggle, the more they come into contact with the sticky drops. Within moments, the tentacles begin to move, blocking escape and carrying prey toward the center of the leaf. There, glands exude a juice full of enzymes and acids that covers then liquefies the insect's soft body. The nutritious liquor is then reabsorbed by the glands.
Digestion can take hours or days.
If the leaf is fairly young, it unfurls again, the glistening dew flows again, an insect lands again . . . Peter D'Amato, who grows and sells carnivorous plants at California Carnivores, writes in The Savage Garden that cells along one side of the sundew tentacles grow and stretch, and the unequal length of the cells causes the tentacle to bend. This is where Kelly Foy, Washington College senior biology and psychology major, comes in. Along with research assistants Shauna Bolden, Matthew McDermott, Megan McMahon, and Leora-Leigh Ramiro, Foy works with biology professor Doug Darnowski to study and propagate carnivorous plants such as the sundew, carrying on the work that scientists like Darwin began. Foy is investigating the presence of a protein called profilin in sundews and what role it may play in the plants' capturing of insects.