New Meat-Eating Plant Species Found In Japan
New Sundew Species Mikio Watanabe "Meat-eating," not "man-eating." Still cool though. According to Japan Times, a new species of carnivorous plant has been found in Aichi Prefecture, on the central-southern coast of Japan's main island. The Japan Times calls it a "pitcher plant," which it is not; as a species related to (and mistaken for) Drosera indica, it's actually a sundew. Sundews and pitcher plants are both carnivorous, and largely insectivorous, but they're very different otherwise. Pitcher plants have a large, cup-shaped flower with a slippery rim that unsuspecting prey falls into, where it is digested. Sundews, on the other hand, have tentacles, looking like very small spines topped with a clear drop of dew, hence the name. It isn't dew, of course; it's a sort of sticky mucous that traps insects, where they die of exhaustion, dehydration, starvation, or suffocation, to be digested by the enzymes within the mucous. I've not...