Emus form breeding pairs during the summer months of December and January and may remain together for about five months. During this time, they stay in an area a few kilometres in diameter and it is believed they find and defend territory within this area. Both males and females put on weight during the breeding season, with the female becoming slightly heavier at between 45 and 58 kg (99 and 128 lb). Mating usually takes place between April and June; the exact timing is determined by the climate as the birds nest during the coolest part of the year. During the breeding season, males experience hormonal changes, including an increase in luteinising hormone and testosterone levels, and their testicles double in size.
Males construct a rough nest in a semi-sheltered hollow on the ground, using bark, grass, sticks and leaves to line it. The nest is almost always a flat surface rather than a segment of a sphere, although in cold conditions the nest is taller, up to 7 cm (2.8 in) tall, and more spherical to provide some extra heat retention. When other material is lacking, the bird sometimes uses a spinifex tussock a metre or so across, despite the prickly nature of the foliage. The nest can be placed on open ground or near a shrub or rock. The nest is usually placed in an area where the emu has a clear view of its surroundings and can detect approaching predators.
Female emus court the males; the female's plumage darkens slightly and the small patches of bare, featherless skin just below the eyes and near the beak turn turquoise-blue. The colour of the male's plumage remains unchanged, although the bare patches of skin also turn light blue.  When courting, females stride around, pulling their neck back while puffing out their feathers and emitting low, monosyllabic calls that have been compared to drum beats. This calling can occur when males are out of sight or more than 50 metres (160 ft) away.  Once the male's attention has been gained, the female circles her prospective mate at a distance of 10 to 40 metres (30 to 130 ft). As she does this, she looks at him by turning her neck, while at the same time keeping her rump facing towards him. If the male shows interest in the parading female, he will move closer; the female continues the courtship by shuffling further away but continuing to circle him.
If a male is interested, he will stretch his neck and erect his feathers, then bend over and peck at the ground. He will circle around and sidle up to the female, swaying his body and neck from side to side, and rubbing his breast against his partner's rump. Often the female will reject his advances with aggression, but if amenable, she signals acceptance by squatting down and raising her rump.
Females are more aggressive than males during the courtship period, often fighting for access to mates, with fights among females accounting for more than half the aggressive interactions during this period.  If females court a male that already has a partner, the incumbent female will try to repel the competitor, usually by chasing and kicking.  These interactions can be prolonged, lasting up to five hours, especially when the male being fought over is single and neither female has the advantage of incumbency. In these cases, the females typically intensify their calls and displays.
The sperm from a mating is stored by the female and can suffice to fertilise about six eggs. The pair mate every day or two, and every second or third day the female lays one of a clutch of five to fifteen very large, thick-shelled, green eggs. The shell is around 1 mm (0.04 in) thick, but rather thinner in northern regions according to indigenous Australians. The shell is substantially composed of calcite, and its δ¹³C is a function of the emu's diet. The eggs are on average 13 cm × 9 cm (5.1 in × 3.5 in) and weigh between 450 and 650 g (1.0 and 1.4 lb). The maternal investment in the egg is considerable, and the proportion of yolk to albumen, at about 50%, is greater than would be predicted for a precocial egg of this size. This probably relates to the long incubation period which means the developing chick must consume greater resources before hatching. The first verified occurrence of genetically identical avian twins was demonstrated in the emu. The egg surface is granulated and pale green. During the incubation period, the egg turns dark green, although if the egg never hatches, it will turn white from the bleaching effect of the sun.
The male becomes broody after his mate starts laying, and may begin to incubate the eggs before the clutch is complete. From this time on, he does not eat, drink, or defecate, and stands only to turn the eggs, which he does about ten times a day. He develops a brood patch, a bare area of wrinkled skin which is in intimate contact with the eggs. Over the course of the eight-week incubation period, he will lose a third of his weight and will survive on stored body fat and on any morning dew that he can reach from the nest. As with many other Australian birds, such as the superb fairywren, infidelity is the norm for emus, despite the initial pair bond: once the male starts brooding, the female usually wanders off, and may mate with other males and lay in multiple nests; thus, as many as half the chicks in a brood may not be fathered by the incubating male, or even by either parent, as emus also exhibit brood parasitism.
Some females stay and defend the nest until the chicks start hatching, but most leave the nesting area completely to nest again; in a good season, a female emu may nest three times. If the parents stay together during the incubation period, they will take turns standing guard over the eggs while the other drinks and feeds within earshot. If it perceives a threat during this period, it will lie down on top of the nest and try to blend in with the similar-looking surrounds, and suddenly stand up to confront and scare the other party if it comes close.
Incubation takes 56 days, and the male stops incubating the eggs shortly before they hatch. The temperature of the nest rises slightly during the eight-week period. Although the eggs are laid sequentially, they tend to hatch within two days of one another, as the eggs that were laid later experienced higher temperatures and developed more rapidly. During the process, the precocial emu chicks need to develop a capacity for thermoregulation. During incubation, the embryos are kept at a constant temperature but the chicks will need to be able to cope with varying external temperatures by the time they hatch.
Newly hatched chicks are active and can leave the nest within a few days of hatching. They stand about 12 cm (5 in) tall at first, weigh 0.5 kg (17.6 oz), and have distinctive brown and cream stripes for camouflage, which fade after three months or so. The male guards the growing chicks for up to seven months, teaching them how to find food. Chicks grow very quickly and are fully grown in five to six months; they may remain with their family group for another six months or so before they split up to breed in their second season. During their early life, the young emus are defended by their father, who adopts a belligerent stance towards other emus, including the mother. He does this by ruffling his feathers, emitting sharp grunts, and kicking his legs to drive off other animals. He can also bend his knees to crouch over smaller chicks to protect them. At night, he envelops his young with his feathers. As the young emus cannot travel far, the parents must choose an area with plentiful food in which to breed. In captivity, emus can live for upwards of ten years.


There are few native natural predators of emus still extant. Early in its species history it may have faced numerous terrestrial predators now extinct, including the giant lizard Megalania, the thylacine, and possibly other carnivorous marsupials, which may explain their seemingly well-developed ability to defend themselves from terrestrial predators. The main predator of emus today is the dingo, which was originally introduced by Aboriginals thousands of years ago from a stock of semi-domesticated wolves. Dingoes try to kill the emu by attacking the head. The emu typically tries to repel the dingo by jumping into the air and kicking or stamping the dingo on its way down. The emu jumps as the dingo barely has the capacity to jump high enough to threaten its neck, so a correctly timed leap to coincide with the dingo's lunge can keep its head and neck out of danger.
Despite the potential prey-predator relationship, the presence of predaceous dingoes does not appear to heavily influence emu numbers, with other natural conditions just as likely to cause mortality. Wedge-tailed eagles are the only avian predator capable of attacking fully-grown emus, though are perhaps most likely to take small or young specimens. The eagles attack emus by swooping downwards rapidly and at high speed and aiming for the head and neck. In this case, the emu's jumping technique as employed against the dingo is not useful. The birds try to target the emu in open ground so that it cannot hide behind obstacles. Under such circumstances, the emu can only run in a chaotic manner and change directions frequently to try to evade its attacker. Other raptors, monitor lizards, introduced red foxes, feral and domestic dogs, and feral pigs occasionally feed on emu eggs or kill small chicks.


Emus can suffer from both external and internal parasites, but under farmed conditions are more parasite-free than ostriches or rheas. External parasites include the louse Dahlemhornia asymmetrica and various other lice, ticks, mites and flies. Chicks sometimes suffer from intestinal tract infections caused by coccidian protozoa, and the nematode Trichostrongylus tenuis infects the emu as well as a wide range of other birds, causing haemorrhagic diarrhoea. Other nematodes are found in the trachea and bronchi; Syngamus trachea causing haemorrhagic tracheitis and Cyathostoma variegatum causing serious respiratory problems in juveniles.


Emus were used as a source of food by indigenous Australians and early European settlers. Emus are inquisitive birds and have been known to approach humans if they see unexpected movement of a limb or piece of clothing. In the wild, they may follow and observe people. Aboriginal Australians used a variety of techniques to catch the birds, including spearing them while they drank at waterholes, catching them in nets, and attracting them by imitating their calls or by arousing their curiosity with a ball of feathers and rags dangled from a tree. The pitchuri thornapple (Duboisia hopwoodii), or some similar poisonous plant, could be used to contaminate a waterhole, after which the disoriented emus were easy to catch. Another stratagem was for the hunter to use a skin as a disguise, and the birds could be lured into a camouflaged pit trap using rags or imitation calls. Aboriginal Australians only killed emus out of necessity, and frowned on anyone who hunted them for any other reason. Every part of the carcass had some use; the fat was harvested for its valuable, multiple-use oil, the bones were shaped into knives and tools, the feathers were used for body adornment and the tendons substituted for string.
The early European settlers killed emus to provide food and used their fat for fuelling lamps. They also tried to prevent them from interfering with farming or invading settlements in search of water during drought. An extreme example of this was the Emu War in Western Australia in 1932. Emus flocked to the Chandler and Walgoolan area during a dry spell, damaging rabbit fencing and devastating crops. An attempt to drive them off was mounted, with the army called in to dispatch them with machine guns; the emus largely avoided the hunters. Emus are large, powerful birds, and their legs are among the strongest of any animal and powerful enough to tear down metal fencing. The birds are very defensive of their young, and there have been two documented cases of humans being attacked by emus.


In the areas in which it was endemic, the emu was an important source of meat to Aboriginal Australians. They used the fat as bush medicine and rubbed it into their skin. It served as a valuable lubricant, was used to oil wooden tools and utensils such as the coolamon, and was mixed with ochre to make the traditional paint for ceremonial body adornment. Their eggs were also foraged for food.
An example of how the emu was cooked comes from the Arrernte of Central Australia who called it Kere ankerre:
Emus are around all the time, in green times and dry times. You pluck the feathers out first, then pull out the crop from the stomach, and put in the feathers you've pulled out, and then singe it on the fire. You wrap the milk guts that you've pulled out into something [such as] gum leaves and cook them. When you've got the fat off, you cut the meat up and cook it on fire made from river red gum wood.
The birds were a food and fuel source for early European settlers, and are now farmed, in Australia and elsewhere, for their meat, oil and leather. Commercial emu farming started in Western Australia around 1970. The commercial industry in the country is based on stock bred in captivity, and all states except Tasmania have licensing requirements to protect wild emus. Outside Australia, emus are farmed on a large scale in North America, with about 1 million birds in the US, Peru, and China, and to a lesser extent in some other countries. Emus breed well in captivity, and are kept in large open pens to avoid the leg and digestive problems that arise from inactivity. They are typically fed on grain supplemented by grazing, and are slaughtered at 15 to 18 months.
The Salem district administration in India advised farmers in 2012 not to invest in the emu business which was being heavily promoted at the time; further investigation was needed to assess the profitability of farming the birds in India. In the United States, it was reported in 2013 that many ranchers had left the emu business; it was estimated that the number of growers had dropped from over five thousand in 1998 to one or two thousand in 2013. The remaining growers increasingly rely on sales of oil for their profit, although, leather, eggs, and meat are also sold.
Emus are farmed primarily for their meat, leather, feathers and oil, and 95% of the carcass can be used. Emu meat is a low-fat product (less than 1.5% fat), and is comparable to other lean meats. Most of the usable portions (the best cuts come from the thigh and the larger muscles of the drum or lower leg) are, like other poultry, dark meat; emu meat is considered for cooking purposes by the US Food and Drug Administration to be a red meat because its red colour and pH value approximate that of beef, but for inspection purposes it is considered to be poultry.
Emu fat is rendered to produce oil for cosmetics, dietary supplements, and therapeutic products. The oil is obtained from the subcutaneous and retroperitoneal fat; the macerated adipose tissue is heated and the liquefied fat is filtered to get a clear oil. This consists mainly of fatty acids of which oleic acid (42%), linoleic and palmitic acids (21% each) are the most prominent components. It also contains various anti-oxidants, notably carotenoids and flavones.
There is some evidence that the oil has anti-inflammatory properties; however, there have not yet been extensive tests, and the USDA regards pure emu oil as an unapproved drug and highlighted it in a 2009 article entitled "How to Spot Health Fraud". Nevertheless, the oil has been linked to the easing of gastrointestinal inflammation, and tests on rats have shown that it has a significant effect in treating arthritis and joint pain, more so than olive or fish oils. It has been scientifically shown to improve the rate of wound healing, but the mechanism responsible for this effect is not understood. A 2008 study has claimed that emu oil has a better anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory potential than ostrich oil, and linked this to emu oil's higher proportion of unsaturated to saturated fatty acids. While there are no scientific studies showing that emu oil is effective in humans, it is marketed and promoted as a dietary supplement with a wide variety of claimed health benefits. Commercially marketed emu oil supplements are poorly standardised.
Emu leather has a distinctive patterned surface, due to a raised area around the feather follicles in the skin; the leather is used in such items as wallets, handbags, shoes and clothes, often in combination with other leathers. The feathers and eggs are used in decorative arts and crafts. In particular, emptied emu eggs have been engraved with portraits, similar to cameos, and scenes of Australian native animals. Mounted Emu eggs and emu-egg containers in the form of hundreds of goblets, inkstands and vases were produced in the second half of the nineteenth century, all richly embellished with images of Australian flora, fauna and indigenous people by travelling silversmiths, founders of a 'new Australian grammar of ornament'. They continued longstanding traditions that can be traced back to the European mounted ostrich eggs of the thirteenth century and Christian symbolism and notions of virginity, fertility, faith and strength. For a society of proud settlers who sought to bring culture and civilisation to their new world, the traditional ostrich-egg goblet, freed from its roots in a society dominated by court culture, was creatively made novel in the Australian colonies as forms and functions were invented to make the objects attractive to a new, broader audience. Significant designers Adolphus Blau, Julius Hogarth, Ernest Leviny, Julius Schomburgk, Johann Heinrich Steiner, Christian Quist, Joachim Matthias Wendt, William Edwards and others had the technical training on which to build flourishing businesses in a country rich in raw materials and a clientele hungry for old-world paraphernalia.


The emu has a prominent place in Australian Aboriginal mythology, including a creation myth of the Yuwaalaraay and other groups in New South Wales who say that the sun was made by throwing an emu's egg into the sky; the bird features in numerous aetiological stories told across a number of Aboriginal groups. One story from Western Australia holds that a man once annoyed a small bird, who responded by throwing a boomerang, severing the arms of the man and transforming him into a flightless emu. The Kurdaitcha man of Central Australia is said to wear sandals made of emu feathers to mask his footprints. Many Aboriginal language groups throughout Australia have a tradition that the dark dust lanes in the Milky Way represent a giant emu in the sky. Several of the Sydney rock engravings depict emus, and the birds are mimicked in Indigenous dances. Hunting emus, known as kari in the Kaurna language, features in the major Dreaming story of the Kaurna people of the Adelaide region about the ancestor hero Tjilbruke.
The emu is popularly but unofficially considered as a faunal emblem – the national bird of Australia. It appears as a shield bearer on the Coat of arms of Australia with the red kangaroo, and as a part of the Arms also appears on the Australian 50-cent coin. It has featured on numerous Australian postage stamps, including a pre-federation New South Wales 100th Anniversary issue from 1888, which featured a 2 pence blue emu stamp, a 36-cent stamp released in 1986, and a $1.35 stamp released in 1994. The hats of the Australian Light Horse are decorated with emu feather plumes.
Trademarks of early Australian companies using the emu included Webbenderfer Bros frame mouldings (1891), Mac Robertson Chocolate and Cocoa (1893), Dyason and Son Emu Brand Cordial Sauce (1894), James Allard Pottery Wares (1906), and rope manufacturers G. Kinnear and Sons Pty. Ltd. still use it on some of their products.
There are around six hundred gazetted places in Australia with "emu" in their title, including mountains, lakes, hills, plains, creeks and waterholes. During the 19th and 20th centuries, many Australian companies and household products were named after the bird. In Western Australia, Emu beer has been produced since the early 20th century and the Swan Brewery continues to produce a range of beers branded as "Emu". The quarterly peer-reviewed journal of the Royal Australasian Ornithologists Union, also known as Birds Australia, is entitled Emu: Austral Ornithology.
The comedian Rod Hull featured a wayward emu puppet in his act for many years and the bird returned to the small screen in the hands of his son after the puppeteer's death in 1999. In 2019, American insurance company Liberty Mutual launched an advertising campaign that features LiMu Emu, a CGI-rendered emu.


In John Gould's Handbook to the Birds of Australia, first published in 1865, he lamented the loss of the emu from Tasmania, where it had become rare and has since become extinct; he noted that emus were no longer common in the vicinity of Sydney and proposed that the species be given protected status. In the 1930s, emu killings in Western Australia peaked at 57,000, and culls were also mounted in Queensland during this period due to rampant crop damage. In the 1960s, bounties were still being paid in Western Australia for killing emus, but since then, wild emus have been granted formal protection under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999. Their occurrence range is between 4,240,000 and 6,730,000 km² (1,640,000–2,600,000 sq mi), and a 1992 census suggested that their total population was between 630,000 and 725,000. Their population trend is thought to be stable and the International Union for Conservation of Nature assesses their conservation status as being of least concern. The isolated emu population of the New South Wales North Coast Bioregion and Port Stephens is listed as endangered by the New South Wales Government.
Although the population of emus on mainland Australia is thought to be higher now than it was before European settlement, some local populations are at risk of extinction. The threats faced by emus include the clearance and fragmentation of areas of suitable habitat, deliberate slaughter, collisions with vehicles and predation of the eggs and young.


Black-shouldered spinyleg (Dromogomphus spinosus) is a species of dragonflies in the family Gomphidae.
Like other spinylegs, D. spinosus have long spines on their legs that help in the capture of prey. True to their name their shoulders are black. The dorsal thorax has a light green I-shaped mark with pale ovals on either side. Their flight time is between late May and early September from southern Manitoba to the east coast of the US as far south as Florida. Terminal segments form a club with yellow lateral markings.
Adults average 2.5 in (64 mm).


Dromogomphus spoliatus, the flag-tailed spinyleg, is a species of clubtail in the dragonfly family Gomphidae. It is found in North America.
The IUCN conservation status of Dromogomphus spoliatus is "LC", least concern, with no immediate threat to the species' survival. The population is stable. The IUCN status was reviewed in 2017.


Drosera aberrans is a perennial tuberous species in the genus Drosera that is native to New South Wales, South Australia, and Victoria. It grows in a rosette 3 to 5 cm in diameter with green, orange-yellow, or red leaves. It is native to southern inland South Australia, southern and central Victoria, and one single collection from New South Wales. It grows in a variety of soils from sand to laterite gravel and limestone clay in mallee woodland, heathland, and open forests. It flowers from July to September.
It was perhaps first illustrated by Ferdinand von Mueller in 1879, which he identified as Drosera whitackeri [sic], though Allen Lowrie and John Godfrey Conran note that this could represent artistic license and may not have been drawn from an actual specimen. Lowrie and Sherwin Carlquist first formally described this taxon in 1992 as a subspecies of Drosera whittakeri. Lowrie and Conran reviewed the specimens of D. whittakeri in 2008 and elevated subsp. aberrans to species rank based on the colony-forming morphology of this species.


Drosera anglica, commonly known as the English sundew or great sundew, is a carnivorous flowering plant species belonging to the sundew family Droseraceae. It is a temperate species with a circumboreal range, although it does occur as far south as Japan, southern Europe, and the island of Kauai in Hawaii, where it grows as a tropical sundew. It is thought to originate from an amphidiploid hybrid of D. rotundifolia and D. linearis, meaning that a sterile hybrid between these two species doubled its chromosomes to produce fertile progeny which stabilized into the current D. anglica.


Drosera anglica is a perennial herb which forms an upright, stemless rosette of generally linear-spatulate leaves. As is typical for sundews, the laminae are densely covered with stalked reddish colored mucilaginous glands, each tipped with a clear droplet of a viscous fluid used for trapping insects. The lamina, which is 15–35 millimetres (0.59–1.38 in) long, is held semi-erect by a long petiole, bringing the total leaf size to 30–95 mm. Plants are green, coloring red in bright light. In all populations except those in Kaua'i, D. anglica forms winter resting buds called hibernacula. These consist of a knot of tightly curled leaves at ground level, which unfurl in spring at the end of the dormancy period. The root system is weak and penetrates only a few centimeters, serving mainly as an anchor and for water absorption. Nitrogen is in short supply in bogs and trapping and digesting insects provides an alternate source.
Drosera anglica flowers in the summer, sending up peduncles 6–18 centimetres (2.4–7.1 in). long bearing several white flowers which open individually. Like other sundews, the flowers have five sepals, petals, and stamens with three styles. The petals for this species are 8–12 mm long, and the flowers have branched 2-lobed styles. The odorless, nectar-less flowers do not rely on insect pollinators for pollination, rather setting seed well through self-pollination (autogamy).  The black roundish spindle-shaped seeds, are 1 to 1+1⁄2 mm long. The fruits are a dehiscent three-valved capsule.


Like all sundews, D. anglica uses stalked mucilaginous glands called tentacles which cover its laminae to attract, trap, and digest small arthropods, usually insects. These are attracted by a sugary scent exuded by the glands, and upon alighting on the plant adhere to the sticky drops of mucilage. Although most of its prey consists of small insects such as flies, bulkier insects with large wings are also caught. Small butterflies, damselflies, and even dragonflies can become immobilized by the plant's sticky mucilage.
The plant's initial response to contact with prey consists of thigmotropic (movement in response to touch) tentacle movement, with tentacles bending toward the prey and the center of the leaf to maximize contact. D. anglica is also capable of further movement, being able to bend the actual leaf blade around prey to further the digestion process. Tentacle movement can occur in a matter of minutes, whereas the leaf takes hours or days to bend. When something gets caught, the tentacles touching the prey exude additional mucilage to mire down the prey, which eventually dies of exhaustion or is asphyxiated as the mucilage clogs its tracheae. Once the prey has been digested and the resulting nutrient solution has been absorbed by the plant, the leaf unfurls, leaving only the prey's exoskeleton behind.


Drosera anglica grows in open, non-forested habitat with wet, often calcium-rich soils. These include bogs, marl fens, quaking bogs, cobble shores, and other calcareous habitats. This tolerance of calcium is relatively rare in the rest of the genus. D. anglica is often associated with various sphagnum mosses, and many times grows in a soil substrate that is entirely composed of living, dead, or decomposed sphagnum. The sphagnum wicks moisture to the surface while simultaneously acidifying it. What soil nutrients are not seeped away by the constant moisture are often used up by the sphagnum or made unavailable by the low soil pH. Since nutrient availability is low, competition from other plants is diminished, allowing the carnivorous English sundew to flourish.


Drosera anglica is one of the most widely distributed sundews in the world. It is generally circumboreal, meaning that it is found at high latitudes around the globe. In a few areas, however, it is found farther south, particularly in Japan, southern Europe, the Hawaiian island of Kauaʻi, and California. Plants from Hawaiʻi, where it is known as mikinalo, are generally smaller than normal and do not experience a winter dormancy period. Its natural habitat includes 12 U.S. states, including Alaska, and 11 Canadian provinces and territories. The altitudinal range is from 5 m to at least 2000 m.
In the US state of Minnesota, it was found in 1978 growing in shallow pools in peatlands with minerotrophic water dominated by low growing mosses and sedge species; because of its limited to small populations, and the type of microhabitats that it occupies, it is listed as a threatened species in the state.


All North American Drosera species except for D. anglica have a chromosome count of 2n=20. In 1955, Wood noted that D. anglica had a chromosome count of 2n=40, and hypothesized that it was of hybrid amphidiploid origin. Since the leaf morphology of D. anglica is an intermediary between that of D. rotundifolia and D. linearis and the two occur sympatrically in several locations, Wood conjectured that D. anglica likely originated from a hybrid between these two.
All North American Drosera species produce sterile hybrids. The natural hybrid D. rotundifolia × D. linearis (conventionally but incorrectly referred to as Drosera ×anglica), is also sterile but is morphologically similar to the modern D. anglica. Errors in meiosis during ovule and pollen production, however, can result in a chromosome doubling which can allow for viable seed to be produced. The resulting plants, known as amphiploids, would be fertile. Woods noted that this appeared to be an ongoing process with D. anglica speciating from D. rotundifolia × D. linearis through amphidiploidy in multiple locations. The question remains as to why D. anglica is so widespread, whereas the range of D. linearis is limited to the Great Lakes region of North America. The greater adaptability of D. anglica to varied habitat conditions could be a major factor.


Drosera anglica was first described by William Hudson in 1778. It has frequently been confused with the other circumpolar long-leaf Drosera, D. intermedia. This confusion was fueled by the resurfacing of an older name, D. longifolia (described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753), which was regarded as being too ambiguous in description and had been applied to specimens of both D. anglica and D. intermedia. Herbarium specimens were also a mix of the two species. These points led Martin Cheek to propose D. longifolia for rejection as a species name in 1998. The proposal was accepted and the taxon listed as rejected in 1999.


Several naturally occurring hybrids involving D. anglica exist. These include:
These are all sterile. In addition, several man-made hybrids have been made.


Drosera arcturi is a perennial, insectivorous  species of sub-alpine or alpine herb native to Australia and New Zealand. It is one of New Zealand's two alpine species of sundew, the other being Drosera stenopetala. The specific epithet, which translates as "of Arthur" from Latin, is a reference to Mount Arthur, in north-eastern Tasmania, the type locality of the species.
Drosera arcturi grows in bogs, tarns and seepages, most commonly at montane or alpine elevations and is also commonly found in Sphagnum bogs. It is found in alpine areas from the East Cape of the North Island, New Zealand, southwards to Stewart Island, New Zealand. It is found above 1500m altitude in the North Island, descending to sea level in the South Island. It is also found in the mountains of southeastern Australia and in Tasmania, where it is occasionally found growing down to sea level in the west and south-west of the island. In New Zealand, D. arcturi is often found growing in clumps alongside Utricularia dichotoma.
The leaves of D. arcturi are linear, 1–5 cm long, undivided, and range in colour from pale green to muddy brown, to maroon if subjected to full sunlight. Like all other species of Drosera, D. arcturi catches insects using sticky, glandular hairs on its leaves. In D. arcturi, these glandular hairs are red. Young leaves begin at the center of the plant and are folded along their center. Once the young leaf reaches full maturity it unfolds like a book.
The plants' first upright leaves emerge in spring. After two or three leaves have formed, the nominal form produces a small, solitary white flower, 13 mm across, which is borne on a short stalk in summer, and positioned near the top of the leaves. The giant, lowland form produces 1–5 flowers on a long inflorescence up to 25 cm long. Flowers are present from November to February and fruits are present in January–March.
D. arcturi is a summer grower, and after flowering its leaves gradually reduce in size to form an elongated, horn-shaped hibernaculum. In this form it passes the cold, harsh alpine winters. The hibernaculum is normally buried near the surface of the soil or moss and is usually covered with snow for several months during winter.


Drosera capillaris, the pink or spathulate-leaved sundew (not to be confused with Drosera spatulata), is a small carnivorous plant of the family Droseraceae in the genus Drosera. They are frequently found in wet pine flatwoods and bogs of the southeastern United States, ranging from eastern Texas east to Florida and north to Virginia, as well as in some areas of the Caribbean. They thrive in moist, acidic soil.
D. capillaris is a small plant, usually ranging from 2 to 4 cm in diameter, but in wet habitats it has been known to grow up to 7 cm. In strong sun the entire plant appears red with round, spoon-shaped leaf blades sporting numerous tentacles. In normal light, the leaves are lime-green and the tentacles red. The leaves are arranged in a rosette and generally lie flat on the ground.
Some individuals of this species act as annuals and some as perennials. Germination occurs throughout the fall, and germination time varies over a matter of months. The flowers are pink and typically show up in April. However, these plants flower over a huge range of times and sizes, and some individuals complete their life cycles within a year while others survive for two or more years.
It is not unusual to see D. capillaris, along with their relative the Drosera brevifolia (the dwarf sundew), carpet large areas so thickly it is hard to walk without stepping on tens of them growing out of wet sand or long-fiber sphagnum or just overflowing from a road-side ditch. Both sundews commonly live side-by-side with American pitcher plants (Sarracenia), butterworts, and bladderworts.
In cultivation, mislabeled "D. capillaris" are commonly distributed and most often are actually D. tokaiensis.


Drosera cistiflora is a species of sundew, known for its unusually large flowers. It is native to southern Africa.


Drosera intermedia, commonly known as the oblong-leaved sundew, spoonleaf sundew, or spatulate leaved sundew, is an insectivorous plant species belonging to the sundew genus. It is a temperate or tropical species native to Europe, southeastern Canada, the eastern half of the United States, Cuba, Hispaniola, and northern South America.


Drosera intermedia is a perennial herb which forms a semi-erect stemless rosette of spatulate leaves up to 10 cm tall.  Plants in temperate regions undergo dormancy during which they form a winter resting bud called a hibernaculum.
As is typical for sundews, the leaf blades are densely covered with stalked mucilaginous glands which secrete a sugary nectar to attract insects. These then become ensnared by the mucilage and, unless they are strong enough to escape, are suffocated or die from exhaustion. The plant then secretes digestive enzymes from sessile glands and later absorbs the resulting nutrient solution to supplement the poor mineral nutrition of the plants natural environment.
Drosera intermedia blooms from June through August, forming up to 15 cm. tall inflorescences bearing 3–8 white flowers. Fertilized ovaries swell to form egg-shaped dehiscent seed capsules which bear numerous tiny seeds.


Drosera intermedia is one of the most widely distributed species in the genus, and one of only three Drosera species native to Europe (the others are D. rotundifolia and D. anglica). It is also found in eastern North America, Cuba, and northern South America. The Cuban and South American forms are tropical and do not form hibernacula in the winter.
Drosera intermedia grows in sunny, but constantly moist habitats including bogs, fens, wet sandy shorelines and wet meadows.  Since it is carnivorous, it is able to occupy relatively infertile habitats including wet sand and peat.  It is a relatively weak competitor, and so is excluded from more fertile sites by competition from canopy-forming perennials.  It can survive high water periods as buried seeds, and then re-establish when water levels fall.


Drosera whittakeri (scented sundew, Whittaker's sundew) is a sundew that is native to South Australia and Victoria.


Plants are 4 to 8 cm in diameter, with broadly spathulate leaves arranged in a rosette. These may be green, orange-yellow or red in colour and are 10 to 15 mm long and 9 to 13 mm wide.  Up to 20 white flowers are produced overall, with multiple flowers open at any one time. The main flowering period is May to November in its native range, but flowers may appear throughout the year.


The species was formally described by Jules Émile Planchon in Annales des Sciences Naturelles in 1848 as Drosera "Whittakerii". The species was named after Derbyshire botanist Joseph Whittaker who collected some 300 plant specimens from Adelaide and the southern Mount Lofty Ranges to Encounter Bay between 1839–1840.
Two subspecies are recognised by some authorities:
Drosera whittakeri subsp. aberrans Lowrie & Carlquist
Drosera whittakeri Planch. subsp. whittakeri
In 2008, Allen Lowrie and John G. Conran elevated the former to species status, as Drosera aberrans. The authors also argue that Drosera praefolia should be considered a distinct species, rather than a synonym of D. whittakeri.


D. iulia is common in the tropical and subtropical areas of North, Central, and South America. In South America, throughout countries like Brazil, Ecuador, and Bolivia, the Julia butterfly is commonly distributed. The butterfly is also widespread throughout a number of the Caribbean islands, with endemic subspecies located in Cuba, Dominica, the Bahamas, and Puerto Rico, among others. Moving further north, the species can be commonly witnessed in Central America up into Texas and Florida (and can occasionally be found to move into the Nebraska area during the summer). The geographic distribution of D. iulia overlaps with the ranges of other butterflies which sometimes leads to conflict. For example, the ranges of D. iulia and the gulf fritillary overlap; in some cases, gulf fritillaries can sometimes be subjected to competition and fighting from Dryas iulia moderata when the two species have breeding populations in similar areas and within the same geographic range.


D. iulia flights take place throughout the year in southern Florida and southern Texas, but especially during the fall. The butterfly in its U.S. range has been seen to occasionally migrate as far north as Nebraska. However, south of its United States range, the Julia butterfly generally does not migrate. The butterfly's flight pattern can be fast or slow, and is usually seen around the middle story of their forest habitat.


D. iulia caterpillars eat slots into the leaves of their hostplant once they emerge from their egg. However, they do not have nests in their hostplants. They instead use the remaining part of the leaf as a protected area to rest on.
The caterpillars of the Julia butterfly have pink, gray, and black coloration throughout their body with maroon and cream patches. Long, branched, black spines also cover their entire body. A cream-colored, inverted Y-shaped mark can be seen on the front of the caterpillar's head.
Larvae emit noxious chemicals in their larval stage because of the trace cyanide in their hostplant. This makes the larvae unpalatable to certain bird species, especially tanagers.


Listed alphabetically:
D. i. alcionea (Cramer, 1779) – (Suriname, Bolivia, Brazil)
D. i. carteri (Riley, 1926) – (Bahamas)
D. i. delila (Fabricius, 1775) – (Jamaica)
D. i. dominicana (Hall, 1917) – (Dominica)
D. i. framptoni (Riley, 1926) – (St. Vincent)
D. i. fucatus (Boddaert, 1783) – (Dominican Republic)
D. i. iulia (Fabricius, 1775) – (Puerto Rico)
D. i. lucia (Riley, 1926) – (St. Lucia)
D. i. largo Clench, 1975 – (Florida)
D. i. martinica Enrico & Pinchon, 1969 – (Martinique)
D. i. moderata (Riley, 1926) – (Mexico, Honduras, Ecuador)
D. i. nudeola (Bates, 1934) – (Cuba)
D. i. warneri (Hall, 1936) – (St. Kitts)
D. i. zoe Miller & Steinhauser, 1992 – (Cayman Islands)


Dryas octopetala, the mountain avens, eightpetal mountain-avens, white dryas or white dryad, is an Arctic–alpine flowering plant in the family Rosaceae. It is a small prostrate evergreen subshrub forming large colonies. The specific epithet octopetala derives from the Greek octo (eight) and petalon (petal), referring to the eight petals of the flower, an unusual number in the Rosaceae, where five is the normal number. However, flowers with up to 16 petals also occur naturally.
As a floral emblem, it is the official territorial flower of the Northwest Territories and the national flower of Iceland.


The stems are woody, tortuous, with short, horizontal rooting branches. The leaves are glabrous above, densely white-tomentose beneath. The flowers are produced on stalks 3–10 cm (1–4 in) long, and have eight creamy white petals – hence the specific epithet octopetala. The style is persistent on the fruit with white feathery hairs, functioning as a wind-dispersal agent. The  feathery hairs of the seed head first appear twisted together and glossy before spreading out to an expanded ball which the wind quickly disperses.


Dryas octopetala has a widespread occurrence throughout mountainous areas where it is generally restricted to limestone outcrops. These include the entire Arctic, as well as the mountains of Scandinavia, Iceland, the Alps, Carpathian Mountains, Balkans, Caucasus and in isolated locations elsewhere. In Great Britain it occurs in the Pennines (northern England), at two locations in Snowdonia (north Wales), and more widely in the Scottish Highlands; in Ireland it occurs on The Burren and a few other sites. In North America it is found in Alaska, most frequently on previously glaciated terrain, and through the Canadian rockies  reaching as far south as Colorado in the Rocky Mountains.
It grows in dry localities where snow melts early, on gravel and rocky barrens, forming a distinct heath community on calcareous soils.


The Younger Dryas, Older Dryas and Oldest Dryas stadials are named after Dryas octopetala, because of the great quantities of its pollen found in cores dating from those times. During these cold spells, Dryas octopetala was much more widely distributed than it is today, as large parts of the northern hemisphere that are now covered by forests were replaced in the cold periods by tundra.


D. octopetala is cultivated in temperate regions as groundcover, or as an alpine or rock garden plant. It has gained the Royal Horticultural Society's Award of Garden Merit. The leaves are occasionally used as an herbal tea.


The downy woodpecker (Dryobates pubescens) is a species of woodpecker, the smallest in North America.


The downy woodpecker was described and illustrated with a hand-coloured plate by the English naturalist Mark Catesby in his The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands, which was published between 1729 and 1732. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he included the downy woodpecker, coined the binomial name Picus pubescens and cited Catesby's book. The specific epithet pubescens is the Latin for "pubescent" or "downy". Linnaeus specified the type locality as America septentrionali (North America) but the locality is now restricted to South Carolina. The downy woodpecker was usually placed in either Dendrocopos or Picoides, but a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2015 found that these genera did not form monophyletic groups. In the revised generic classification, the downy woodpecker was placed with four other species in the resurrected genus Dryobates, that had been erected in 1826 by the German naturalist Friedrich Boie with the downy woodpecker as the type species. Within the genus, the downy woodpecker is sister to a clade containing Nuttall's woodpecker (Dryobates nuttalli) and the ladder-backed woodpecker (Dryobates scalaris).
Despite their close resemblance, the downy and hairy woodpeckers are not very closely related; the outward similarity is an example of convergent evolution. Why they evolved this way cannot be explained with confidence; it may be relevant that the species exploit rather different-sized foodstuffs and do not compete very much ecologically.
Seven subspecies are recognized:
D. p. glacialis (Grinnell, 1910) – southeast Alaska
D. p. medianus (Swainson, 1832) – central Alaska to east Canada and central and east USA
D. p. fumidus (Maynard, 1889) – southwest Canada and west Washington
D. p. gairdnerii (Audubon, 1839) – west Oregon to northwest California
D. p. turati (Malherbe, 1860) – central Washington to central California
D. p. leucurus (Hartlaub, 1852) – Rocky Mountains (southeast Alaska to southwest USA)
D. p. pubescens (Linnaeus, 1766) – southeast USA


Adult downy woodpeckers are the smallest of North America's woodpeckers, but there are many smaller species elsewhere, especially the piculets. The total length of the species ranges from 14 to 18 cm (5.5 to 7.1 in) and the wingspan from 25 to 31 cm (9.8 to 12.2 in). Body mass ranges from 20 to 33 g (0.71 to 1.16 oz). Standard measurements are as follows: the wing chord is 8.5–10 cm (3.3–3.9 in), the tail is 4–6 cm (1.6–2.4 in), the bill is 1–1.8 cm (0.39–0.71 in) and the tarsus is 1.1–1.7 cm (0.43–0.67 in). The downy woodpecker is mainly black on the upperparts and wings, with a white back, throat and belly and white spotting on the wings. There is one white bar above the eye, and one below. They have a black tail with white outer feathers barred with black. Adult males have a red patch on the back of the head whereas juvenile birds display a red cap.
The downy woodpecker is virtually identical in plumage pattern to the larger hairy woodpecker, but it can be distinguished from the hairy by the presence of black spots on its white tail feathers and the length of its bill. The downy woodpecker's bill is shorter than its head, whereas the hairy woodpecker's bill is approximately equal to head length.
The downy woodpecker gives a number of vocalizations, including a short pik call. One may identify the woodpecker by the pik-call, counting half a second between piks (a total of four must be heard). The rattle-call is a short burst that sounds similar to a bouncing ball, while that of the Hairy Woodpecker is a shorter burst of the same amplitude. Like other woodpeckers, it also produces a drumming sound (sounds like four taps ) with its beak as it pecks into trees. Its drums are slower compared to other North American species.


Downy woodpeckers are native to forested areas, mainly deciduous, of North America. Their range consists of most of the United States and Canada, except for the deserts of the southwest and the tundra of the north. Mostly permanent residents, northern birds may migrate further south; birds in mountainous areas may move to lower elevations.
Downy woodpeckers nest in a tree cavity excavated by the nesting pair in a dead tree or limb. In the winter, they roost in tree cavities. Downy woodpeckers forage on trees, picking the bark surface in summer and digging deeper in winter. They mainly eat insects, but they also feed on seeds and berries. They are a natural predator of the European corn borer, a moth that costs the US agriculture industry more than $1 billion annually in crop losses and population control. In winter, especially, downy woodpeckers can often be found in suburban backyards with mature trees where they feed on suet and shelled peanuts provided by mesh birdfeeders.


The ladder-backed woodpecker (Dryobates scalaris) is a North American woodpecker.


The ladder-backed woodpecker is a small woodpecker about 16.5 to 19 cm (6½ to 7½ inches) in length. It is primarily colored black and white, with a barred pattern on its back and wings resembling the rungs of a ladder. Its rump is speckled with black, as are its cream-colored underparts on the breast and flanks.  Southern populations have duskier buff breasts and distinctly smaller bills. Adult males have a red crown patch that is smaller in immatures and lacking in adult females. The ladder-backed woodpecker is very similar in appearance to Nuttall's woodpecker, but has much less black on its head and upper back, and the range of the two species only intersects a minimal amount in southern California and northern Baja California.  Hybrids are known.
Ladder-backed woodpeckers nest in cavities excavated from tree trunks, or in more arid environments a large cactus will do. The female lays between 2 and 7 eggs, which are plain white. The eggs are incubated by both sexes, but the nesting period and other details are unknown.
Like most other woodpeckers the ladder-backed woodpecker bores into tree-trunks with its chisel-like bill to hunt for insects and their larva, but it also feeds on fruit produced by cacti.


The ladder-backed woodpecker is fairly common in dry brushy areas and thickets and has a rather large range. The species can be found year-round over the southwestern United States (north to extreme southern Nevada and extreme southeastern Colorado), most of Mexico, and locally in Central America as far south as Nicaragua.


The hairy woodpecker (Leuconotopicus villosus) is a medium-sized woodpecker that is found over a large area of North America. It is approximately 250 mm (9.8 in) in length with a 380 mm (15 in) wingspan. With an estimated population in 2003 of over nine million individuals, the hairy woodpecker is listed by the IUCN as a species of least concern. Some nomenclature authorities, such as the eBird/Clements checklist, place this species in the genus Dryobates.


The hairy woodpecker was described and illustrated with a hand-coloured plate by the English naturalist Mark Catesby in his The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands which was published between 1729 and 1732. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he included the downy woodpecker, coined the binomial name Picus villosus and cited Catesby's book. The specific epithet villosus is the Latin word for "hairy". Linnaeus specified the type locality as America septentrionali (North America), with specific mention of Raccoon, New Jersey. The hairy woodpecker was formerly usually placed in either Dendrocopos or Picoides but a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2015 found that these genera did not form monophyletic groups. In the revised generic classification, the hairy woodpecker was moved to the genus Leuconotopicus that was erected by the French ornithologist Alfred Malherbe in 1845. Some taxonomic authorities place the hairy woodpecker in an expanded Dryobates that includes all the species in the genera Leuconotopicus and Veniliornis.
Seventeen subspecies are recognised:
L. v. septentrionalis (Nuttall, 1840) – west North America from south Alaska to Ontario to New Mexico
L. v. picoideus (Osgood, 1901) – Queen Charlotte Island (off British Columbia, Canada)
L. v. harrisi (Audubon, 1838) – southeast Alaska to north California
L. v. terraenovae (Batchelder, 1908) – Newfoundland
L. v. villosus (Linnaeus, 1766) – southeast Canada, north central and northeast USA
L. v. orius (Oberholser, 1911) – south central British Columbia to southeast California and southwest Utah
L. v. monticola (Anthony, 1898) – central British Columbia to north New Mexico
L. v. leucothorectis (Oberholser, 1911) – southeast California to west Texas
L. v. audubonii (Swainson, 1832) – southeast USA
L. v. hyloscopus (Cabanis & Heine, 1863) – west and south California, north Baja California (Mexico)
L. v. icastus (Oberholser, 1911) – southeast Arizona, southwest New Mexico to west Mexico
L. v. intermedius (Nelson, 1900) – east Mexico
L. v. jardinii	Malherbe, 1845 – south central and east central Mexico
L. v. sanctorum (Nelson, 1897) – southeast Mexico to northwest Nicaragua
L. v. extimus (Bangs, 1902) – north central Costa Rica to west Panama
L. v. piger (Allen, GM, 1905) – north Bahamas
L. v. maynardi (Ridgway, 1887) – south Bahamas


Adults are mainly black on the upper parts and wings, with a white or pale back and white spotting on the wings; the throat and belly vary from white to sooty brown, depending on subspecies. There is a white bar above and one below the eye. They have a black tail with white outer feathers. Adult males have a red patch or two side-by-side patches on the back of the head; juvenile males have red or rarely orange-red on the crown.
The hairy woodpecker measures from 18–26 cm (7.1–10.2 in) in length, 33–43 cm (13–17 in) in wingspan and 40–95 g (1.4–3.4 oz) in weight. It is virtually identical in plumage to the smaller downy woodpecker. The downy has a shorter bill relative to the size of its head, which is, other than size and voice, the best way to distinguish them in the field.  These two species are not closely related, however, and are likely to be separated in different genera. Another way to tell the two species apart is the lack of spots on its white tail feathers (present in the downy). Their outward similarity is a spectacular example of convergent evolution. As to the reason for this convergence, only tentative hypotheses have been advanced; in any case, because of the considerable size difference, ecological competition between the two species is slight.


The hairy woodpecker inhabits mature deciduous forests in the Bahamas, Canada, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, and the United States. It is a vagrant to Puerto Rico and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Mating pairs will excavate a hole in a tree, where they will lay, on average, four white eggs.
These birds are mostly permanent residents. Birds in the extreme north may migrate further south; birds in mountainous areas may move to lower elevations.


These birds forage on trees, often turning over bark or excavating to uncover insects. They mainly eat insects, but also fruits, berries and nuts, as well as sometimes tree sap. They are a natural predator of the European corn borer, a moth that costs the US agriculture industry more than $1 billion annually in crop losses and population control.


The lineated woodpecker (Dryocopus lineatus) is a very large woodpecker which is a resident breeding bird from southern Mexico to northern Argentina and on Trinidad in the Caribbean.


In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the lineated woodpecker in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Cayenne, French Guiana. He used the French name Le pic noir hupé de Cayenne and the Latin name Picus niger cayanensis cristatus. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the 12th edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the lineated woodpecker. Linnaeus included a terse description, coined the binomial name Picus lineatus and cited Brisson's work. The specific name lineatus is Latin and means "lined" or "marked with lines".  The species is now placed in the genus Dryocopus which was introduced by the German naturalist Friedrich Boie in 1826.
There are five subspecies:
D. l. scapularis – (Vigors, 1829): found in western Mexico (Sonora south to Guerrero). The white stripe on the sides of the face is reduced or lacking; also smaller than similis and nominate lineatus. Bill pale, pale horn, dull white, or bluish-white.
D. l. similis – (Lesson, 1847): found in eastern and southern Mexico south to northwestern Costa Rica. Bill pale, pale horn, dull white, or bluish-white. Underparts buffy. Body mass is 136–181 g (4.8–6.4 oz).
D. l. lineatus – (Linnaeus, 1766): nominate, found in eastern and southern Costa Rica south to western Colombia and east to Trinidad, the Guianas and northeastern and eastern Brazil (Maranhão, Bahia), and south to eastern Peru, northern Paraguay and south central Brazil (São Paulo). Bill dark. Body mass is 186–228 g (6.6–8.0 oz).
D. l. fuscipennis – (P. L. Sclater, 1860): found in western Ecuador and northwestern Peru. Bill dark. Smaller than nominate lineatus. Plumage browner, less black.
D. l. erythrops – (Valenciennes, 1826): found in eastern Paraguay, northern and northeastern Argentina and southeastern Brazil. Bill dark. Larger than nominate. White scapular lines often reduced; generally the scapular lines are absent in southern populations, but the "proportion of individuals with scapular lines increases towards range of nominate lineatus" (Winkler et al., 1995). Body mass is 216–264 g (7.6–9.3 oz).


The lineated woodpecker is 31.5 to 36 cm (12.4 to 14.2 in) long. It resembles the closely related pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) of United States and Canada.
Adults are mainly black above, with a red crest and whitish lines from the base of the bill, down the neck and shoulders (though individuals from the south-eastern part of its range commonly lack the line on the shoulders). The underparts are whitish, heavily barred with black. They show white on the wings in flight. Adult males have a red line from the bill to the throat (malar) and a red forehead. In adult females, these plumage features are black. The bill is typically black in both sexes, though pale-billed individuals regularly are seen.
The call of this widespread but wary bird is a loud, ringing wic-wic-wic. Both sexes drum.
In most of its range, it is most likely confused with the crimson-crested woodpecker (Campephilus melanoleucos), which is similar in plumage and size. In the female of that species, the light face line is far broader, and the white shoulder lines meet on the back lower back (forming a "V"). The male crimson-crested woodpecker is quite different with its almost entirely red head.


The habitat of this species is forest borders and other open woodland. It is not generally a mountain bird, though it has occasionally been recorded in the uplands (e.g., in the Serranía de las Quinchas of Colombia) Three white eggs are laid in a nest hole is in a dead tree and incubated by both sexes. The young are fed by regurgitation.
Lineated woodpeckers chip out holes, often quite large, while searching out insects in trees. They mainly eat insects, especially ants and their larvae, beetles and their larvae, termites, orthopterans, caterpillars with some seeds, such as from Heliconia and Clusia rosea, and fruits, berries, and nuts.
Lineated woodpeckers breed March–April in Panama, April–May in Belize, and February–April in Trinidad and Suriname. Nest cavities are excavated in dead trees at variable heights, from 2 to 27 m (6.6–88.6 ft) above the ground. Both sexes excavate the nests, which are about 45 cm (18 in) deep, 13 cm × 18 cm (5.1 in × 7.1 in) wide, and have an entrance about 9 cm (3.5 in) in diameter. Clutch size ranges from 2–4 eggs (2–3 in Trinidad). Males and females take 2- to 3-hour shifts incubating during the day, but only males incubate at night. Chicks are fed about once an hour by both parents through regurgitation; the female does most of the feeding while the male guards the nest. Incubation and fledging periods not documented.


The black woodpecker (Dryocopus martius) is a large woodpecker that lives in mature forests across the northern Palearctic. It is the sole representative of its genus in that region. Its range is expanding. The black woodpecker is easily the largest woodpecker species in Europe as well as in the portion of Asia where it lives and is one of the largest species worldwide. This non-migratory species tends to make its home in old-growth forest or large forest stands and excavates a large tree hole to reside in.  In turn, several species rely on black woodpeckers to secondarily reside in the holes made in trees by them. This woodpeckers diet is comprised mostly of carpenter ants. This species is closely related to, and fills the same ecological niche in Europe as, the pileated woodpecker of North America and the lineated woodpecker of South America, also being similar to the white-bellied woodpecker which is distributed to the south somewhat of the black woodpecker in Asia.


The black woodpecker  was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Picus martius. Linnaeus gave the locality as Europe, but this is now taken to be Sweden. The black woodpecker is now placed in the genus Dryocopus that was introduced by the German naturalist Friedrich Boie in 1826.
Two subspecies are recognised:
D. m. martius (Linnaeus, 1758) – western Europe to the Kamchatka Peninsula and Japan
D. m. khamensis (Buturlin, 1908 – Tibet and southwestern China


The black woodpecker measures 45 to 55 cm (18 to 22 in) long with a 64 to 84 cm (25 to 33 in) wingspan. Body weight is approximately 250 to 400 g (8.8 to 14.1 oz) on average. Among standard measurements, the wing chord is 22.7 to 26 cm (8.9 to 10.2 in), the tail is 15.9 to 17.3 cm (6.3 to 6.8 in), the very long bill is 5 to 6.7 cm (2.0 to 2.6 in) and the tarsus is 3.6 to 4 cm (1.4 to 1.6 in). It is easily the largest woodpecker in its range and is second in size only to the great slaty woodpecker amongst the woodpecker species certain to exist (with the likely extinction of the largest and second largest woodpeckers), although its average mass is similar to that of the Magellanic woodpecker of South America. The closely related pileated and white-bellied woodpeckers also broadly overlap in size with the black woodpecker, but both are somewhat smaller in average and maximal size and mass. The plumage of this crow-sized woodpecker is entirely black apart from a red crown. In males, the entire crown is red, but in females only the top hindcrown is red, with the rest of the body all black. The juvenile black woodpecker is similar but is less glossy, with a duller red crown and a paler grey throat and bill . The piercing yellow eyes and manic, high-pitched calls of the black woodpecker have made it the villain of fairy tales throughout its range. Their voice is remarkable in that it has two different calls. One is a short single high-pitched note, a loud, whistling kree-kree-kree, done only twice in a row. The other is a screech-like shrill while in flight. Unlike other woodpecker species, the black woodpecker does not have a dipping, bounding flight, but instead flies with slow, unsteady-seeming wing beats with its head raised.


The range of the black woodpecker spreads east from Spain across the whole of Europe, excluding Great Britain, Ireland, and northern Scandinavia. It is also native to parts of Asia, including Korea, Japan and China, and to the Middle East, including Iran and Kazakhstan. The southern limits of this woodpecker's range are in Spain and Italy, and it has also been recorded as a vagrant in Portugal. The species is generally more uncommon and more discontinuous in distribution in the Asian part of its range.
The black woodpecker is mainly found in forested regions, with a preference for extensive, mature woodland, including coniferous, tropical, subtropical and boreal forests. It is very widespread throughout mountainous and lowland forests. It is more likely to occur in marginal woods near human habitations during the non-breeding season. This species has been observed at elevations between 100 and 2,400 m (330 and 7,870 ft).
The black woodpecker is noticeably absent from the British Isles. Approximately 80 sightings of the species in the UK have been reported, but some of these are disputed, though the proximity of the British Isles to the species' range in Western Europe means that the species may cross over on a regular basis.


The woodpecker feeds by using its bill to hammer on dead trees to dig out carpenter ants and wood-boring beetle grubs. The selection of foods is relatively predictable, narrow and consistent in this species. Like all woodpeckers, this species has a specially adapted neck containing very strong muscles, which allow it to endlessly hack away at tree bark. Due to the size of its bill and large size and great physical power of this bird, it can access prey fairly deep within a tree. In order to position itself correctly, it has short, stumpy legs, as well as long, sharp claws and very stiff tail feathers. The woodpecker will more than likely choose for its nest a tree with a fungal disease, such as heart rot, although some will utilise a living, healthy tree. Once a hole has been made, the black woodpecker chips downwards through the trunk of the tree, creating a nesting chamber, the only lining being the woodchips created throughout the process. The black woodpecker's excavations provide homes for many other species of bird and mammal, and is therefore considered to be a "keystone" species in many of its habitats throughout its range. It not only provides habitats for other species, but also controls populations of wood-boring insects, helping to protect the trees.
When the nest is ready, the female lays a single clutch of two to eight eggs, the average being four to six. The nest hole is usually dug in a live poplar or pine tree. The breeding pair take it in turns to incubate the eggs, also sharing duties of feeding and brooding the chicks once they have hatched. The nestlings may fight their way to the entrance of the nest in order to be fed first. After 18 to 35 days, the young black woodpeckers will leave the nest, staying with the adults for another week.


The black woodpecker is a fairly widely distributed woodland species and can successfully breed in most areas where extensive woodland is left. At one point, when much of Europe and Asia was deforested, this species declined and in some areas is still struggling today, including in the Pyrenees. They normally require mature trees and ample stands of dead trees to sustain a viable breeding population. However, with the restoration of some forested areas, black woodpeckers have increased in some parts of Europe. They are occasionally considered a nuisance species due to their damage to power lines, communication poles and houses, occasionally resulting in woodpecker mortality due to electrocution or being culled by humans. The main cause of nesting failures appears to be predation. Their main natural predator is the pine marten (Martes martes), which feeds on eggs, nestlings and brooding females and then often takes over the nest hole of the woodpeckers for its own. Other than the marten, there are notably few known natural predators of black woodpeckers. Western jackdaws (Corvus monedula) are notably regular usurpers of this species' nest holes and a potential predator of eggs and small nestlings. A few of the larger birds of prey that can hunt in woodlands may prey on black woodpeckers. Among those recorded are Ural owls (Strix uralensis), Eurasian eagle-owls (Bubo bubo), northern goshawks (Accipiter gentilis), common buzzards (Buteo buteo) and golden eagles (Aquila chrysaetos).


The municipality of Nurmijärvi in Uusimaa, Finland has adopted the black woodpecker as the title bird of the municipality, because in addition to being the most common bird in the locality, it also appears in the literature of Aleksis Kivi, a Finnish national author, originally from the Nurmijärvi. Nurmijärvi's local football club NJS has also adopted the black woodpecker as the club's logo.
Dryocopus martius martius is thought to be the woodpecker referred to in the augural instructions on the early Italic Iguvine Tablets by the Umbrian word peiqu, a bird "very prominent in early Italic religion and mythology."


The pileated woodpecker (Dryocopus pileatus) is a large, mostly black woodpecker native to North America. An insectivore, it inhabits deciduous forests in eastern North America, the Great Lakes, the boreal forests of Canada, and parts of the Pacific Coast. It is the largest extant woodpecker species in North America, with the possible exception of the ivory-billed woodpecker, which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed be reclassified as extinct. It is also the third largest species of woodpecker in the world, after the great slaty woodpecker and the black woodpecker. "Pileated" refers to the bird's prominent red crest, from the Latin pileatus meaning "capped".


The English naturalist Mark Catesby described and illustrated the pileated woodpecker in his book The Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands which was published between 1729 and 1732. Catesby used the English name "The larger red-crested Wood-pecker" and the Latin Picus niger maximus capite rubro. When in 1758 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the tenth edition, he included the pileated woodpecker, coined the binomial name Picus pileatus and cited Catesby's book. The specific epithet pileatus is a Latin word meaning "-capped". The type locality is South Carolina. The pileated woodpecker is now one of six species placed in the genus Dryocopus that was introduced by the German naturalist Friedrich Boie in 1826.
Two subspecies are recognized:
D. p. abieticola (Bangs, 1898) – northern pileated woodpecker, southern Canada south through the western, north-central and northeastern United States
D. p. pileatus (Linnaeus, 1758) – southern pileated woodpecker, the southeastern United States


Adults are 40 to 49 cm (16 to 19 in) long, span 66 to 75 cm (26 to 30 in) across the wings, and weigh 225 to 400 g (7.9 to 14.1 oz). The average weight of females and males combined is about 277 g (9.8 oz), with males weighing about 300 g (11 oz) and females weighing about 256 g (9.0 oz) in mean body mass. The wing chord measures 21.4 to 25.3 cm (8.4 to 10.0 in), the tail measures 14.0 to 17.4 cm (5.5 to 6.9 in), the bill is 4.1 to 6.0 cm (1.6 to 2.4 in) and the tarsus measures 3.1 to 3.8 cm (1.2 to 1.5 in). The northern subspecies is generally slightly larger than the southern. Pileated woodpeckers are mainly black with a red crest, and have a white line down the sides of the throat. Younger specimens tend to have less curved crests, or "mohawks" as some refer to them. They show white on the wings in flight. The flight of these birds is strong and direct, but undulates in the way characteristic of woodpeckers. Adult males have a red line from the bill to the throat; in adult females these are black. Two species found in the Old World, the White-bellied woodpecker (D. javensis) and black woodpeckers (D. martius), are closely related and occupy the same ecological niche in their respective ranges that the pileated occupies in North America. The only North American birds of similar plumage and size were the ivory-billed woodpecker of the southeastern United States and Cuba, and the related imperial woodpecker of Mexico, both of which have been declared probably extinct.


The pileated woodpecker's breeding habitat is forested areas across Canada, the eastern United States, and parts of the Pacific Coast. This bird favors mature forests and heavily wooded parks. They specifically prefer mesic habitats with large, mature hardwood trees, often being found in large tracts of forest. However, they also inhabit smaller woodlots as long as they have a scattering of tall trees. Efforts to restore woodland by removing invasive honeysuckle and buckthorn seem to benefit them, as the removal of brush and shrubbery facilitates their foraging on the ground and in the lower stratum. From 1966 - 2015 the population of pileated woodpecker has, on average, increased by greater than 1.5% per year throughout the northeastern U.S., the Maritimes, the Ohio River Valley, and around the Great Lakes.


Pileated woodpeckers mainly eat insects, especially carpenter ants and wood-boring beetle larvae. They also eat fruits, nuts, and berries, including poison ivy berries. Pileated woodpeckers often chip out large and roughly rectangular holes in trees while searching out insects, especially ant colonies. They also lap up ants by reaching with their long tongues into crevices. They are self-assured on the vertical surfaces of large trees, but can seem awkward while feeding on small branches and vines.  They may also forage on or near the ground, especially around fallen, dead trees, which can contain a variety of insect life. They may forage around the sides of human homes or even cars, and can be observed feeding at suet-type feeders. Although they are less likely feeder visitors than smaller woodpeckers, pileateds may regularly be attracted to them in areas experiencing harsh winter conditions.
Usually, pileated woodpeckers excavate their large nests in the cavities of dead trees. Woodpeckers make such large holes in dead trees that the holes can cause a small tree to break in half. The roost of a pileated woodpecker usually has multiple entrance holes. In April, the hole made by the male attracts a female for mating and raising their young. Once the brood is raised, the birds abandon the hole and do not use it the next year. When abandoned, these holes—made similarly by all woodpeckers—provide good homes in future years for many forest songbirds and a wide variety of other animals. Owls and tree-nesting ducks may largely rely on holes made by pileateds in which to lay their nests. Even mammals such as raccoons may use them. Other woodpeckers and smaller birds such as wrens may be attracted to pileated holes to feed on the insects found in them. Ecologically, the entire woodpecker family is important to the well being of many other bird species. The pileated woodpecker also nests in boxes about 4.6 m (15 ft) off the ground.
A pileated woodpecker pair stays together on its territory all year round and is not migratory. They defend the territory in all seasons, but tolerate floaters during the winter. When clashing with conspecifics, they engage in much chasing, calling, striking with the wings, and jabbing with the bill. Drumming is most common during courtship and to proclaim a territory. Hollow trees are often used to make the most resonant sound possible. The pattern is typically a fairly slow, deep rolling that lasts about three seconds.
Pileated woodpeckers have been observed to move to another site if any eggs have fallen out of the nest—a rare habit in birds. The cavity is unlined except for wood chips. Both parents incubate three to five eggs for 12 to 16 days. The average clutch size is four per nest. The young may take a month to fledge. The oldest known pileated woodpecker was 12 years and 11 months old. Predators at the nest can include American martens, weasels, squirrels, rat snakes, and gray foxes. Free-flying adults have fewer predators, but can be taken in some numbers by Cooper's hawks, northern goshawks, red-shouldered hawks, red-tailed hawks, great horned owls, bald eagles, golden eagles and barred owls.


The pileated woodpecker occupies a large range and is quite adaptable. Its ability to survive in many wooded habitat types has allowed the species to survive human habitation of North America much better than the more specialized ivory-billed woodpecker. Pileated woodpeckers have a large population size, and despite being nonmigratory, are protected under the U.S. Migratory Bird Act. While the large birds control many insect populations, especially tree beetles, that may otherwise experience outbreaks, some people may consider them harmful if found on their property due to the considerable damage that pileated woodpeckers can do to trees and homes.


Cartoonist Walter Lantz is believed to have based the appearance of his creation, Woody Woodpecker on the pileated woodpecker; while patterning the call on the acorn woodpecker.


Dryopteris arguta, with the common name coastal woodfern, is a species of wood fern. It is native to the west coast and western interior mountain ranges of North America, from British Columbia, throughout California, and into Arizona.
It grows between sea level and 6,000 feet (1,800 m). It is found in mixed evergreen forests, oak woodlands, and shady lower elevation slopes in chaparral and woodlands habitats.


Dryopteris arguta is somewhat variable in appearance. Leaflets sometimes turn at an angle from the leaf, giving it a ruffled or lacy look, and the toothed leaflets may have bristles at their tips. According to C. Michael Hogan, The thin concave indusia are quite closely spaced and almost entirely cover the sporangia.


Dryopteris intermedia, the intermediate wood fern or evergreen wood fern, is a perennial, evergreen wood fern native to eastern North America. It is a diploid species, and is the parent of several species of hybrid origin, including Dryopteris carthusiana. Other common names for this species include intermediate shield fern, fancy wood fern, fancy fern, glandular wood fern, American shield fern and common wood fern.
This fern is often confused with several other wood fern species, including D. carthusiana, D. campyloptera, and D. expansa. It especially extensively shares the range of D. carthusiana, but the two may be distinguished by the innermost pinnule on the bottom side of the bottom pinna: this pinnule is longer than the adjacent pinnules in D. carthusiana, but shorter or even in D. intermedia.


Dryopteris intermedia is a perennial fern that grows to a size of about 40–90 cm (16–35 in) tall and 60–90 cm (24–35 in) wide. At its base, it consists of an underground rhizome from which grow the fronds of the plant in a spiral-like arrangement. Each frond consists of a stipe (stalk) that is covered in light-brown scales towards the base and short glandular hairs further up. The stipes generally measure between 1/4 to 1/3 the length of the frond and support a leaf blade that is lance-oblong in shape. The leaves themselves are bipinnately compound, meaning that they divide into leaflets called pinnae and sub-leaflets called pinnules. The pinnules of this species are lobed and toothed. Uniquely, the first pinnule closest to the stem on the lowest pinna is shorter than the second.


Dryopteris intermedia is native to most of eastern North America, ranging from Minnesota in the north-west and Newfoundland and Labrador in the north-east, down to Alabama in the south-west and South Carolina in the south-east. While globally secure, it is considered by NatureServe to be "critically imperiled" in the states of Iowa and Missouri which represent the western limit of its range, and "imperiled" in the states of Illinois and South Carolina as well as the region of Labrador. Similar ferns found in the Azores are often regarded as a subspecies (subsp. azorica) or as a different species (Dryopteris azorica).


Dryopteris intermedia grows in a variety of mesic habitats including forests, woodlands, ravines, swamp edges and rocky slopes.


Dryopteris intermedia is cultivated as an ornamental plant in North America for gardens, especially natural gardens and shade gardens, as it is easy to grow in a range of environments and soils and does not spread much. Care needs to be taken when planting to ensure that the fern is placed in an area of part-shade or full-shade and that the soil remains moist, as it does not tolerate a lot of sun or dry soil.


Several naturally occurring hybrids involving Dryopteris intermedia exist. These include:
Dryopteris campyloptera × Dryopteris intermedia ("hybrid wood fern")
Dryopteris intermedia × Dryopteris marginalis ("glandular marginal wood fern")
Dryopteris ×boottii ("Boott's wood fern")
Dryopteris ×triploidea ("triploid wood fern")
Dryopteris ×dowellii ("Dowell's wood fern")
Dryopteris goldieana × Dryopteris intermedia ("hybrid wood fern")
All of the hybrids listed above are sterile. One exception is the allotetraploid Dryopteris carthusiana (spinulose wood fern), which is said to originate from a hybridization of Dryopteris intermedia and an extinct fern dubbed Dryopteris "semicristata".


Dryopteris marginalis, vernacularly known as the marginal shield fern or marginal wood fern, is a perennial species of fern found in damp shady areas throughout eastern North America, from Texas to Minnesota and Newfoundland. It favors moderately acid to circumneutral soils in cooler areas but is fairly drought-resistant once established. In the warmer parts of its range, it is most likely to be found on north-facing non-calcareous rock faces. It is common in many altitudes throughout its range, from high ledges to rocky slopes and stream banks. Marginal wood fern's name derives from the fact that the sori are located on the margins, or edges of the leaflets.


Dryopteris marginalis is an evergreen fern throughout its range, along with Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides) it is one of the few evergreen ferns. Marginal wood fern grows from a clump with a prominent central rootstock, this rootstock may be exposed and give this fern the appearance of being like a small tree fern. Often, the dead leaves will accumulate beneath the plant. The stipe, or stem which supports the leaf is approximately 1/4 the length of the leaf and covered in bright golden brown scales. The stipe itself is grooved on the upward-facing side and dark red-brown at the base and becoming green further up the leaf.
The leaf is a dark blue-green and thick and leathery in texture. It grows 1–2 ft in height and approximately 6 in wide. Each leaf is broken up into leaflets which are arranged on either side of the main stalk. The tips of these leaflets are generally curved toward the tip of the leaf. These leaflets themselves are divided into subleaflets which are blunt-tipped and either serrated or lobed. The fertile leaflets (leaflets bearing sori and spores) are similar to the fertile leaflets in size and appearance. The round sori are located on the margins of the leaf tissue. Before the sori are ripe they start gray then they turn an interesting blue-violet color before finally turning brown when they are mature. The sori are covered in a kidney-shaped indusium which is smooth.


Dryopteris marginalis has a wide distribution in the northeastern USA. It was found for the first time in Minnesota in 1981, and likely was part of the native flora for a long time but overlooked because of its rarity and its close resemblance to related species. It is listed as a threatened species in Minnesota, not so much because the species is currently threatened, but because there is only one population found on an east-facing bluff composed of sandstone that is capped with limestone. In other parts of its range it is found in woods, on talus-slopes, in rocky areas and walls, on wooded slopes and ravines, and at the edges of woods, streams and roads.


Dryopteris marginalis is grown in gardens in part to full shade, it is an evergreen non-spreading fern that forms a vase-shaped clump of leathery, deeply cut fronds. It is used in shade gardens, rock gardens, and native plantings. There are no serious insect or disease problems that affect it and it is winter hardy in USDA zones 3-8.
Dryopteris marginalis is known to form hybrids with 10 other species and some of the hybrids are common, they can be identified by the malformed spores and sori which are not quite on the margins of the leaves.


It is a distinctive plant sending up erect red-orange stems from a gray-green basal rosette. The small yellowish-red thimble-shaped flowers top the stems in a cyme inflorescence.  Some subspecies are considered threatened locally.


Recognized Dudleya cymosa subspecies:
Dudleya cymosa subsp. agourensis K.M. Nakai - (Agoura Hills dudleya)
Dudleya cymosa subsp. crebrifolia K.M. Nakai & Verity - (San Gabriel River dudleya)
Dudleya cymosa subsp. costatifolia Bartel & Shevock - (Pierpoint springs dudleya)
Dudleya cymosa subsp. cymosa (Lem.) Britton & Rose - (canyon liveforever)
Dudleya cymosa subsp. marcescens Moran - (Marcescent dudleya)
Dudleya cymosa. subsp. ovatifolia - (Santa Monica Mountains dudleya)
Dudleya cymosa subsp. paniculata (Jeps.) K.M. Nakai - (Diablo range dudleya)
Dudleya cymosa subsp. pumila (Rose) K.M. Nakai - (Transverse ranges liveforever)
The subspecies marcescens and ovatifolia are federally listed as threatened species of the United States.


Dudleya cymosa is the larval host plant for the Sonoran blue butterfly, Philotes sonorensis (Lycaenidae)


Dudleya edulis is a species of perennial succulent plant known by the common names fingertips, lady fingers, mission lettuce and the San Diego dudleya. The common name denotes the finger-like shape of the leaves, while the specific epithet edulis refers to the use of the young scapes as food by the Kumeyaay. It is native to Southern California and northern Baja California, and grows on rocky hillsides, cliffs, and bare rock.


Dudleya edulis is made up of an array of fleshy, finger-like leaves growing vertically from a caudex at or just below ground level. The fingerlike leaves are pale green, cylindrical and pointed, growing up to 20 centimetres (7.9 in) tall. It bears a branching inflorescence 10–50 centimetres (3.9–19.7 in) tall, with several terminal branches each bearing up to 10 or 11 flowers. The flowers have pointed white to cream petals about a centimeter long.  The bloom period is May to July. The plant is diploid, with a chromosome number of n=17, which is the base number for Dudleya.


Thomas Nutall discovered the species while on his expedition to California in the 1830s. He found it on the edges of "rocks and ravines, St. Diego" and named it Sedum edule, with the specific epithet owing to the use of the plant as an edible food source by the indigenous peoples. Despite placing it in the genus Sedum, he noted that it was "a remarkable species apparently allied to Echeveria teretifolia." It is unknown why Nutall chose to place the plant in Sedum, as he had described the other Dudleya of the region as Echeveria. It is speculated that he likely placed it as Sedum because of the spreading petals on the flowers.
During their revision of North American Crassulaceae, Nathaniel Lord Britton and Joseph Nelson Rose placed the plant in the genus Stylophyllum, which was differentiated from their new genus Dudleya on the basis of round leaves and spreading petals. With Reid Moran's revision of Dudleya, the plants within Stylophyllum were moved, as Stylophyllum was now a subgenera of Dudleya.
Willis L. Jepson once regarded the nearby Dudleya attenuata as a subspecies of this plant, owing to their similar morphology, although they are very distinct. They can be distinguished by the fact that D. attenuata is a smaller plant, with slender and elongated stems, and fewer smaller leaves that are glaucous and clavate to some degree. The leaf bases are also higher, and the inflorescence is simpler with more remote flowers.
It is known to naturally hybridize with Dudleya stolonifera, D. attenuata, D. brevifolia, D. formosa and D. blochmaniae where their ranges overlap. Most of these hybrids are uncommon, and the plants hybridizing with stolonifera may be backcrosses.


The plant is endemic to chaparral habitats, and is native to southwestern Southern California and slightly into northwestern Baja California. It is found north from coastal Orange County and southern Riverside County, south throughout San Diego County into the Rio San Vicente drainage of Baja California, a habitat that spans over 190 miles (305 km), from the Pacific coast east towards the southwest flank of Cuyamaca Peak, around 40 miles inland and up to elevations of 1,300 meters. In its southern distribution, the plant can be found more on north-facing slopes and cliffs.
It grows in rocky slopes and soil, and on rock outcrops and ledges, from sea level to below 1,300 metres (4,300 ft) in elevation. It is found in coastal sage scrub and chaparral and woodlands habitats.


The plant's structures are borne from the thick, woody and succulent stems, which are otherwise known as caudices. As the plants are generally rooted in vertical bluffs and cliffs, the caudices in age become decumbent or pendent, hanging downwards from their point of origin. On the tip of the caudex is the rosette, which is a circular arrangement of the vegetative leaves. The older, outer leaves of the rosette dry out during the dormant season and are pushed backwards as the rosette and the stem grow forwards. This gives the species an abundance of dried and dead leaves covering the stem; distinguishing it from the relatively leafless stem of Dudleya caespitosa.
Plants are usually seen with multiple rosettes and stems. Multiple rosettes and stems can be formed from a single plant by a process described as "multiplication by division," but better known as dichotomous branching. The primary rosette divides in the center and the two points eventually grow apart until they form two branches with their own rosettes. This process repeats continuously in this species, forming clumps of as little as 4 rosettes to large mats of up to 60 rosettes on a single plant. Branches only form apically (from the rosettes), not from the axils (from the sides).
A leaf-succulent, the rosettes consist of short, thick, and pointed leaves, sometimes covered heavily in a farina, or epicuticular wax, used to shield the plant from the sun and water. (In another species in the genus, Dudleya brittonii, the thick white wax represents a material with the highest measured ultraviolet reflectivity recorded in any plant.) Another form of D. farinosa lacks the white wax, and presents with green and glossy foliage. Stress, cool wind, sunshine, and exposure can cause the edges or tips of the leaves to turn red, maroon or violet.
To sexually reproduce, before the summer the plant begins to erect a tall stalk (called a peduncle) that will bear flowers. The peduncle is covered in 20 to 35 leaves (the leaves on the peduncle and inflorescences are referred to as bracts), similar in color to the vegetative leaves on the rosette. When the structure matures, the stalk divides into 3 to 5 branches (which may sometimes divide once more) that bear the flowers, giving an overall flat-topped shape to the flower-covered inflorescence topping the peduncle. The pale-yellow flowers, attached to tiny and erect stalks on the branches known as pedicels, face topside and have a somewhat tubular shape to them.


Stems / caudices: The caudices are caespitose, branching apically and absent of axillary branches. They measure between 10–60 cm (3.9–23.6 in) long and 1–3 cm (0.39–1.18 in) wide, and are usually not elongate. The older parts of the stem are typically not visible between the dried leaves.
Rosettes: Plants have 4 to 60 rosettes, which measure 4–25 cm (1.6–9.8 in) wide. The rosettes have 15 to 30 leaves.
Leaves: The leaves are evergreen, and may be gray or green, becoming reddish. They measure 2.5–6 cm (0.98–2.36 in) long by 1–2.5 cm (0.39–0.98 in) wide and 5–9 mm (0.20–0.35 in) thick. The base of the leaf is 1–2.5 cm (0.39–0.98 in) wide. The leaf shape is oblong-ovate, and the tip is acute or generally obtuse. The surfaces are sometimes farinose. The leaf margin tends to have 2 or more angles between the upper and lower faces of the leaf.
Inflorescence(s): The peduncle is 10–35 cm (3.9–13.8 in) tall, and measures  3–8 mm (0.12–0.31 in) wide. The peduncle then divides into 3 or 5 close-set branches, which may sometimes branch bifurcately themselves. The terminal branches (cincinni) measure 1–3.5 cm (0.39–1.38 in) long, and are ascending in age. The terminal branches bear 3 to 11 flowers on them, on pedicels that are 1–3 mm (0.039–0.118 in) long. The pedicels are erect and do not bend in fruit. The flowers face topside, and their terminal branches are not twisted.
Bracts: There are 20 to 35 bracts on the inflorescences. The bracts are arranging in a spreading fashion, and are shaped cordate-ovate, measuring 10–25 mm (0.39–0.98 in) long by 10–20 mm (0.39–0.79 in) wide, with an acute apex.
Flowers: The calyx measures 5–8 mm (0.20–0.31 in) long by 5–6 mm (0.20–0.24 in) wide. The sepals are 3–7 mm (0.12–0.28 in) long, and are shaped deltate-ovate. The petals are 10–14 mm (0.39–0.55 in) long by 3–5 mm (0.12–0.20 in) wide, and are connate (fused) 1–2 mm (0.039–0.079 in). The petals are shaped oblanceolate, the apex acute to obtuse, the tips often outcurved, and colored pale yellow. The upper margins of the adjacent petals are not touching. The corolla is loosely tubular, and not tightly pentagonal. The pistils are connivent and erect, and the follicles are erect.


This species is unusual in the genus because some of the populations of this plant have non-convolute petals. The petals of almost all other Dudleya are convolute, with each petal having one edge exposed and the other covered by the next petal. In the subgenus Dudleya, each petal is folded along the midline, with the exposed edge tightly connivent to the inner edge of the next petal, which forms a connate pentagonal tube adapted to hummingbird pollinators. However, in D. farinosa, the petals are not as strongly folded and instead mostly flat, and with the exposed edge of each petal not connivent to the inner edge of the next one, but rather somewhat separated, giving the corolla a loosely tubular shape. In the northern part of its range, D. farinosa has corollas that are often completely non-convolute, a trait shared only by one other species, the morphologically dissimilar Dudleya variegata, which has plesiomorphic Sedum-like flowers and a corm-like stem.


This type specimen of this species was first collected by Theodor Hartweg around 1847, in a locality described as the "Rocks near Carmel Bay, California." A photograph of the type specimen, as well the description and type locality, indicates that the type was collected from the populations of this species growing on the rocky bluffs of the Monterey Peninsula. There, the species is well separated from Dudleya caespitosa, as it grows only on the granitic rocks just above the reach of the waves, while D. caespitosa is found more landwards and with a different morphology, namely more saturated yellow flowers, narrower, green leaves, and a more slender and less leafier inflorescence.
Based on Hartweg's collection, John Lindley described the species as Echeveria farinosa. Lindley's description emphasizes the epicuticular wax on the leaves as "if they had been powdered with flour." He also notes the "remarkable whiteness" of the leaves and the pale lemon flowers as being two characters that clearly delimited the species. Lindley also described the basionym of D. caespitosa (as Echeveria laxa) on the same page.
† E. farinosa ; caulescens, nana, foliis linguiformibus acutis planis candidis adultis viridibus, caule decumbente, racemis secundis corymbosopaniculatis, floribus pedunculatis.
— John Lindley, The Journal of the Horticultural Society of London, v.4 (1849) p. 292


This plant is native to the coastline of parts of Oregon and northern California, where it is commonly found on bluffs and coastal hillsides. One specialized habitat in which D. farinosa is found is the Monterey Cypress forests at Point Lobos and Del Monte Forest in Monterey County, California.


Native plants are being dug up illegally in huge numbers, originally thought to satisfy demand as house plants in South Korea and China. Recent investigations show the demand may come from a smaller community of highly skilled succulent collectors and enthusiasts.


"Dudleya farinosa". NatureServe Explorer. Arlington, Virginia: NatureServe. 2022.
Moran, Reid (2009). "Dudleya farinosa".  In Flora of North America Editorial Committee (ed.). Flora of North America North of Mexico (FNA). New York and Oxford – via eFloras.org, Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, MO & Harvard University Herbaria, Cambridge, MA.
McCabe, Stephen Ward (2012). "Dudleya farinosa". Jepson eFlora. Jepson Flora Project. Retrieved 13 June 2022.
Callahan, Mary (2019-03-09). "In a 'Gold Rush-type phenomenon', smugglers target coastal succulents". Santa Rosa Press Democrat. Retrieved 2019-03-10.
McCormick, Erin (27 April 2018). "Stolen succulents: California hipster plants at center of smuggling crisis". The Guardian. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 30 April 2018.
"Dudleya farinosa (Lindley) Britton & Rose, 1903 (engl./ fr.)". International Crassulaceae Network. Retrieved 13 June 2022.


Dudleya pulverulenta is a species of perennial succulent plant known by the common names chalk lettuce, chalk dudleya, and chalk liveforever. It is one of the larger Dudleya, with a silvery, waxy rosette that may greatly contrast with its habitat. It is also regarded as one of the most distinctive members of the Dudleya, with the most advanced inflorescence in the genus, consisting of pendant, hummingbird pollinated flowers, the longest corolla, and the highest nectar output, along with the largest range of all the Dudleya, over 1000 kilometers, being found from Monterey County in California to the Sierra de San Borja in southern Baja California.