According to the Japan Times, a new species of carnivorous plant has been discovered for the first time in Aichi Prefecture, on the central-southern coast of Japan's main island. The newspaper calls the discovery a "pitcher plant," , but experts are saying that it is actually of the Drosera species, commonly known as the sundew plant.
Although pitcher plants and sundews are both carnivorous and feed mostly on insects lured to their deaths inside their sticky "mouths", they are very different otherwise. While pitcher plants possess a slippery, bell-shaped flower that unsuspecting prey become trapped in, sundews have sticky tentacles topped with a single drop of "dew" that insects become hopelessly mired in with the slightest touch. Eventually, the insects die from exhaustion, dehydration, starvation, or suffocation, to be digested by the enzymes within the mucous the plant produces!
I'm sure there is no connection between the discovery of the new "meat-eating" plant and the Fukushima nuclear meltdown that took place after the horrific Japanese earthquake and tsunami in March 2011. At least, I hope not...
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