Don’t even THINK of eating me! New tobacco plant Nicotiana insecticida traps and kills bugs dead with its sticky hairy stem. Pictured here is Nicotiana tabacum, the harmless cousin of Nicotiana insecticida.
According to reports from a few sources, a new tobacco plant, discovered at a rural truck stop in Australia is stalking down and killing insects.
Literally.
Running up and down the stalks or stems of this newly discovered tobacco variety plant is a sticky goo which traps insects, including gnats, files, and aphids. Unlike a Venus fly trap which consumes and “digests” the bugs, the killer tobacco plant simply traps and kills the bugs, apparently so they don’t proceed up the stem to do further damage to the plant.
"We were surprised to find species new to science in such barren land, including the species we have named Nicotiana insecticida, which has sticky glands covering all its surfaces to trap and kill small insects such as gnats, aphids and flies," research author Professor Mark Chase, from Curtin's School of Molecular and Life Sciences and RBG Kew Professor Chase said in a report from Curtis’s Botanical Magazine
"This is the first time a wild tobacco species has been reported to kill insects, so it is very significant,” said Chase. Seeds from Australia were cultivated in the UK, and they continued to kill insects, "so its insidious deadly nature is not diminished by the great distance from its homeland."
There was no report on the smoking quality Nicotiana insecticida.