During the monsoon, Maharashtra’s rocky plateaus change dramatically. Rainwater gathers in shallow depressions, seasonal flowers begin to appear, and among them grow some plants small enough to be easily missed.
Look closely at the leaves of a sundew, and you may notice tiny droplets catching the light. They resemble dew, giving the plant an almost delicate appearance.
Those glistening droplets are sticky traps for insects.
Davbindu (dew drop). Gavti Davbindu (the local name for Drosera indica). Seetechi Aasave (the local name for Utricularia purpurascens).
These are some of the local names associated with the tiny carnivorous plants that appear across Maharashtra’s famous monsoon plateaus.
The Davbindu, or Drosera burmanni, is a tiny plant that hugs the ground. Drosera indica, locally known as Gavti Davbindu, has slender leaves covered with glistening droplets.
Another carnivorous plant found around Kaas, Utricularia purpurascens, is locally known as Seetechi Aasave.
Every monsoon, plants such as these emerge across Maharashtra’s rocky plateaus, becoming part of a seasonal ecosystem that appears for a few rain-soaked months before the landscape changes again.
How the monsoon transforms bare rock into a living landscape
Think of the Kaas Plateau in Satara.
During the dry months, its surface can appear dominated by hard rock with very little vegetation. Come June, the monsoon begins to transform it.
Rainwater collects in shallow depressions. By August and September, seasonal flowers and herbs spread across the plateau.
Lateritic plateaus occur across parts of Maharashtra’s Western Ghats, including the Panchgani-Mahabaleshwar landscape and the northern Western Ghats.
The word “lateritic” sounds technical, but the landscape itself is easy to picture.
Laterite is a hard, iron-rich rock formed through intense weathering, usually in regions with heavy rainfall. Across these plateaus, it creates a rocky surface where the soil can be extremely shallow.
These conditions make it difficult for many plants to grow. For some highly specialised species, however, this is the habitat to which they have adapted.
In a 2012 study, botanists Manoj M. Lekhak and Shrirang Yadav surveyed 10 high-altitude lateritic plateaus in southwestern Maharashtra.
They recorded 356 species and five varieties of herbaceous plants, including 67 endemic species. These high-altitude lateritic plateaus are locally known as sadas (lateritic plateaus).
Why these tiny plants turn to insects for nutrients
Plants normally obtain nutrients such as nitrogen and phosphorus from the soil. Across these rocky plateaus, however, the soil can be acidic, shallow and poor in nutrients.
Carnivorous plants have adapted by supplementing what they obtain from the soil with nutrients from tiny prey.
Carnivory is one of the adaptations that helps plants overcome shortages of nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur.
A 2025 study by Sarita Gosavi, Pratiksha Mestry, Swapnil Vyas and Ankur Patwardhan, published in the Journal of Threatened Taxa, surveyed the lateritic Panchgani Tableland in Satara district.
Carnivory is one of the adaptations that helps plants overcome shortages of nutrients such as nitrogen, phosphorus and sulphur. Photograph: (Dinesh Valke)
The researchers recorded 189 plant species across 54 families, including 78 endemic taxa. Carnivorous plants accounted for 4.7% of the recorded flora.
The study also recorded Utricularia albocaerulea as Vulnerable and Utricularia praeterita as Near Threatened.
How a sparkling sundew traps its prey
The trapping strategy of the Davbindu begins with the tiny hair-like structures covering its leaves.
At their tips sits a sticky substance. In sunlight, these droplets sparkle like dew, helping explain the local name Davbindu, which is associated with drops of dew.
An unsuspecting insect lands on the leaf and gets stuck.
The plant then uses digestive enzymes to break down the prey and absorb nutrients from it.
For the plant, this carnivory acts as a nutritional supplement. The insects provide nutrients that are difficult to obtain from the poor soil.
The bladderwort’s trap is hidden from sight
Utricularia, or bladderwort, uses a different strategy.
Its name comes from the tiny bladder-like traps found on the plant. These traps can create a suction mechanism that pulls in microscopic aquatic organisms when triggered.
At Kaas, Utricularia purpurascens is locally listed as Seetechi Aasave.
Their hollow bladders (traps) capture tiny insects using a suction mechanism. Photograph: (Dhritiman Mukherjee-via-Roundglass Sustain)
The mechanism may be very different from the sticky leaves of a sundew, but both plants have adapted to the same fundamental challenge: obtaining nutrients in habitats where the soil offers very little.
A life cycle timed to Maharashtra’s rains
These plateaus follow a seasonal rhythm shaped by the monsoon.
Early rains bring the first seasonal plants and orchids. By August and September, flowering reaches a peak, with Eriocaulon species and carnivorous Utricularia becoming prominent.
As the monsoon ends, grasses take over and the seasonal vegetation begins to disappear.
The plateau, in other words, follows its own seasonal clock. What a visitor sees depends greatly on when they arrive.
Why these rocky plateaus can be easy to underestimate
That short seasonal life cycle can make these habitats easy to overlook.
A visitor arriving during summer may see hard rock and sparse vegetation. During the rains, the same surface reveals the flowers, herbs and carnivorous plants adapted to its shallow soils and seasonal wet patches.
The Panchgani Tableland study found that tourism, grazing and soil alteration are among the pressures affecting its plant diversity.
Many of these plants grow in extremely shallow soil or seasonal wet patches. Disturbing the surface can therefore damage the very microhabitats on which they depend.
The monsoon reveals what the dry landscape can conceal for much of the year: a highly seasonal ecosystem where even tiny patches of soil and water support unusual forms of plant life.
And among the smallest are the Davbindu, Gavti Davbindu and Seetechi Aasave, appearing with the rains, catching their tiny prey, and becoming part of the plateau’s brief annual burst of life.
