Unknown carnivorous mountain plants identified
Wednesday, September 30, 2020 @ 12:23 PM
BOTANISTS at Alicante University have identified two as-yet unknown carnivorous plants growing wild in different mountain ranges in Spain.
One of these, the Pinguicula Tejedensis, is native to the Tejeda and Almijara mountain ranges in the province of Granada, and the other, the Pinguicula Casperiana, is found in the central mountains between the provinces of Cuenca and Guadalajara (Castilla-La Mancha).
The pinguicula family is commonly known as the 'butterwort', and the first variety identified has been named after the Tejeda mountains, whilst the second has been baptised in homage to the German taxonomist Siegfried J. Casper, a world specialist in this type of carnivorous shrubs.
Alicante botanists have been researching the taxonomy and conservation of Iberian and northern African pinguiculae for some years, and say they usually grow out of rock faces, normally with a chalky surface, in water pockets or spongy calcium carbonate deposits and at a very specific altitude.
“These are very scarce environments, very localised and exclusive, and act as real islands where the processes of differentiation and species division are extremely active,” the university team explains.
Read more at thinkSPAIN.com