A research team of the Uttarakhand Forest Department recently discovered a very rare carnivorous plant species called Utricularia Furcellata in the western Himalayan region for the first time. This carnivorous plant belongs to a genus which is commonly known as bladderworts. “It uses one of the most sophisticated and developed plant structures for trap and the targets range from protozoa to insects, mosquito larvae and even young tadpoles.

The discovery has been done in the Mandal valley located in Chamoli district of Uttrakhand. The discovery was part of a project study of insectivorous plants in Uttarakhand. It is the first sighting of the plant not only in Uttarakhand but in the entire western Himalayan region.

This discovery has been published in the prestigious Journal of Japanese Botany’, a 106-year-old journal on plant taxonomy and botany .