Giant Meat-Eating Pitcher Plant Found in Palawan's Mt. Victoria

Tutubi, ever curious and inquisitive, is fond of exotic flora and fauna. A few years ago, even in his peso-pinching ways, he impulsively bought a small pitcher plant offered to him for fifty pesos while waiting for a friend at Mcdonalds at the corner of EDSA and Quezon Avenue (near Manila Seedling Bank)

The pitcher plant was a small specimen with pitchers approximately an inch in diameter at the mouth and 2 inches deep pockets. Since Tutubi didn't know how to actually grow and take care of the pitcher plant except hope that mosquitoes come there to be trapped, the pitcher plant died a few days later probably due to "hunger." Sadly, Tutubi wasn't able to take better pictures of it due to his busy schedule.



The pitcher plant Tutubi kept for a few days was minuscule compared the newly-discovered pitcher plant species with pitchers large enough to trap and digest a rat. The only larger species of pitcher plant can be found in the island of Borneo named Nepenthes rajah.

The new rat-eating plant species, discovered in 2007 but formally introduced this year by the trio of Stewart McPherson, Alastair Robinson and Volker Heinrich, was christened with the scientific name Nepenthes attenboroughii, in honor of British naturalist Richard Attenborough. It was discovered on the slopes of remote Mt. Victoria in the Philippines western province of Palawan.

Another reason for intrepid explorers to visit Palawan, dubbed the Philippines last frontier, where new species of plants and animals are waiting to be discovered.

Sources:
CNN, Inquirer.net, Times Online