Giant meat-eating plant discovered

A giant carnivorous plant has been discovered by a team of scientists in the central Philippines, and named after Sir David Attenborough.

The new species of pitcher plant is so big it can catch rats as well as insects in its traps.

It occurs only on the summit of one mountain in Palawan, Philippines and was discovered by botanists Alastair Robinson, Stewart McPherson, Volker Heinrich and Andreas Fleischmann in June 2007.

They named the remarkable plant Nepenthes attenboroughii in honour of natural history expert Sir David Attenborough. It is a real-life version of Audrey, the man-eating plant created by nerdy florist Seymour Krelborn in the 1986 film Little Shop of Horrors.

Nepenthes attenboroughii produces some of the largest, most voluminous and most beautiful traps of all known pitcher plants.

Mr McPherson, 26, from Poole in Dorset, said: "It's definitely not a joke. There's 120 different species all around the world.

"This particular one was discovered as part of a survey to look at all of them. It's one of the largest, there's only one or two that are any bigger. It is big enough to catch rats."

The team said the structure of its leaves, pitchers and flowers suggests strongly that it is a close relative of the great Nepenthes rajah from Borneo and may be related to the Nepenthes flora of Palawan and Borneo.

It is one of 13 new species the team has discovered during three years of expeditions in South East Asia.

Their findings were published in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society earlier this year. Mr McPherson's company Redfern Natural History is working on a documentary and has produced books about the new species.