Newly Discovered Meat-Eating Plant In Japan

Fear not... the newly discovered meat-eating plant - not a man-eating plant - was not discovered in the Fukushima-ken area, home to the recent nuclear fallout from the Dai-ichi nuclear power reactor, rather it was discovered in Aichi-ken - which is southwest of Tokyo.

So far, this carnivorous plant recently discovered in Aichi-ken is, according to Watanabe Mikio (surname first), a researcher with the Aichi University of Education, a variety of the pitcher plant with purple-red flowers. This is an off-shoot of the white-flowered Drosera indica, which is designated as an endangered species by Japan's Environment Ministry.

However, according to THIS website - www.Popsci.com - they have it all wrong... the newly discovered plant species is actually a species related to (and mistaken for) Drosera indica, and is, in fact, actually a sundew.

The Popsci website says:
"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."

Regardless... this is a new species of carnivorous plant, and one that has been around since the time of the dinosaurs...

Still, according to Watabnabe, the Drosera indica grows naturally from India to Japan, where it can be found in regions ranging from Kanto to Kyushu.

"I'm planning to study how the plant came (to Japan) and how it has diversified into several different species," Watanabe says.

Cheers,
Andrew Joseph