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A new study has found that what was previously considered a common flower is carnivorous.
(Courtesy of UBC and Qianshi Lin)
“We didn’t know he was carnivorous,” Sean Graham, a botanist at the University of British Columbia and one of the study’s authors, says NPR.
Posted Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers found that the The false western asphodel, a white flower common in the Pacific Northwest and first discovered in 1879, exhibited a genetic deletion or loss of DNA segment, as well as features that other carnivorous plants have for trap food.
“They have these sticky rods,” Graham said. “So, you know, it was kind of like, hmm, I wonder if that could be a sign that this could be carnivorous.”
Researchers have found that tiny hairs along the flower’s stem produce a digestive enzyme that other carnivorous plants use to trap and eat insects.
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There are less than 1000 carnivor plants, and the new classification is the first carnivorous plant discovered in 20 years.
However, given the latest discovery, Graham believes there may be more common plants that are actually carnivorous.
“I suspect,” Graham said, “that there might be more carnivorous plants than we think.”
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