Giant Carnivorous Plant Discovered
Posted by: Loren Coleman on August 11th, 2009
The newly discovered giant pitcher plant (Nepenthes attenboroughii).
A new species of giant carnivorous plant has been discovered in the highlands of the central Philippines, according to Matt Walker, Editor, BBC Earth News.
The pitcher plant is among the largest of all pitchers and is so big that it can catch rats as well as insects in its leafy trap.
During the same expedition, botanists also came across strange pink ferns and blue mushrooms they could not identify.
The botanists have named the pitcher plant after British natural history broadcaster David Attenborough.
During the expedition, the team also encountered another pitcher, Nepenthes deaniana, which had not been seen in the wild for 100 years. The only known existing specimens of the species were lost in a herbarium fire in 1945.
On the way down the mountain, the team also came across a striking new species of sundew, a type of sticky trap plant, which they are in the process of formally describing.
Thought to be a member of the genus Drosera, the sundew produces striking large, semi-erect leaves which form a globe of blood red foliage.
For the rest of the news on this discovery, read BBC News here.
Unidentified blue fungi.
Any day now they will find triffids.
Very cool.
I would have liked to see some kind of scale in the pictures… and the fern.
Amazing!
Mr. Attenburough deserves the honor!
What really would be awesome would be if something like Audrey from Little Shop Of Horrors would be found.
That would start tongues wagging…:)
korollocke said, “Any day now they will find triffids.”
We can only hope!
Those blue mushrooms are striking! Some of the psilocybes and conocybes “stain” blue when bruised, and some south seas entoloma are blue. I’d like to see the underside of these. Wonder if they are gilled or tube mushrooms?