Just 0.2 percent of the flowering plants in the world are known to be carnivorous. We’re most familiar with Venus Flytraps, pitcher plants, and other plants that capture and digest their prey with showy techniques. However, there are other carnivorous plants that are much sneakier in their murderous ways. This week, PNAS reports that a plant with a previously unknown method of carnivory has been discovered; it catches and consumes its prey underground.

Philcoxia minensis belongs to a small genus of plants that grow in the Cerrado region of Brazil. Like many other carnivorous plants, it lives in a bright, moist, low-nutrient environment and has a nonmycorrhizal root system, meaning that it doesn't form a symbiotic relationship with fungi to help it obtain nutrients. That led researchers to suspect that it might get those nutrients through carnivory. However, its method of prey capture wasn't obvious at first glance because from the surface, there’s no sign of any type of trap.

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