From T. C. Copland 23 June 1874
Office of Public Works, | Customs House, Dublin,
23 June 1874
Sir
Observing in a paragraph in the Echo last week that you are publishing a work on the habits of Drosera rotundifolia, it may interest you to receive my own notes on those of another species—Drosera dichotoma.1 It is a tender or half hardy plant, but I cannot give you its habitat. A plant I had for some years threw out fresh leaves on a foot stalk about 7 or 8 inches high every year armed with points tipped with glutinous matter just as our own has; and I have invariably found that a fly caught on the points of any of these was drawn into the channel in the centre of the leaf & sucked dry in a very short time. The leaves were with me deciduous & generally were filled with victims before they shewed any signs of decline, when they gradually dried up.
The rough sketch on the other side is from memory but is pretty near the natural size & appearance.— I unfortunately lost the plant by keeping it in sphagnum (Irish) as an experiment—
I am | Sir | Your obedt servt | Thos. C. Copland

C. Darwin Esq
CD annotations
Footnotes
Bibliography
Insectivorous plants. By Charles Darwin. London: John Murray. 1875.
Summary
Sends a description of Drosera dichotoma and its manner of fly-catching [see Insectivorous plants, p. 282].
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-9509
- From
- Thomas Cooke Copland
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- Office of Public Works, Dublin
- Source of text
- DAR 58.1: 62–3
- Physical description
- ALS 4pp sketch
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 9509,” accessed on 26 September 2022, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-9509.xml
Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 22