A newly discovered giant carnivorous plant in Mount Victoria, Palawan, Philippines which is large enough to catch a rat as well insects in its leafy trap., according to a story by the BBC. The botanist have named the pitcher plant after naturalist and broadcaster David Attenborough, Nepenthes attenboroughii, is a member of the pitcher plant family, so-called because of it is shaped like a large pitcher plant.
According to Stewart McPherson of Red Fern Natural History Production which told BBC that "The plant is among the largest of all carnivorous plant species and produces spectacular traps as large as other species which catch not only insects, but also rodents as large as rats."
The species was first noted by a group of Christian missionaries who scale Mount Victoria in 2000 which pricked in the interest of natural history explorer tewart McPherson of Red Fern Natural History Production based in Poole, Dorset, United Kingdom and independent botanist Alastair Robinson, formerly of the University of Cambridged, United Kingdom and Andreas Fleischman of Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, Germany.
"At around 1,600 metres above sea level, we suddenly saw one great pitcher plant then a second, then many more," Stewart McPherson told BBC.
The team has place type specimens of the new species in the herbarium of the Palawan State University and they also encountered another pitcher, Nepenthes deaniana, which had not seen in the wild for a century.
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