When I was in 5th grade I had accompanied my mother to the grocery store one day. Upon browsing through the “impulse buy” section, I had spotted a small green plant in a plastic see-through container. When I picked it up to examine the plant I immediately notice its famous teeth-like ends of its leaves. As oddly as it sounds, it was in a grocery store where I had first seen a Venus Fly Trap. Naturally being intrigued by such oddities, I was elated. I needed to have it.

With a little persuasion I had convinced my mother on buying me the plant. Growing up, we were never financially stable, so getting this plant was a big deal to me. I felt that it was my responsibility to take care of it, while feeding it daily and observing how the plant behaved and grew. In my mind, I was a little frightened of it. I kept remembering “Little Shop of Horrors” and how that giant man-eating plant kept saying “Feed me Seymour!”. So I knew to not over feed it or else it’d grow tall enough to drag my ass out of bed and swallow me whole.

I wanted to experience first hand how this plant could digest an insect. I wasn’t sure if it would start to actually chew it up and in a very cartoon-like gulp swallow it down or if it would just suck the “insect juice” out of the bug and spit out the dried and shriveled insect corpse, a Dracula plant if you will.

I go outside to the only place that I know where flies are sitting still. The trash can. So I spend a few minutes swatting at flies like a maniac. I’m sure my neighbors were looking at the weird kid down the street through their windows. Shaking their heads as they close their blinds. Probably concerned about the value of their property going down as they watch me swatting at the air, near the trash in a hot July afternoon.

Somehow I managed to stun a fly long enough for me to trap it in a container. I scooped it up and rushed to feed my new pet. When I took the fly out of the container, I noticed that it was dead. I must’ve swatted a little too hard. Poor little fellow. On second thought, I might have saved it from a more gruesome death. I dropped the fly in between the leaves of the plant. Waited for a few seconds…nothing. I prodded the fly with a toothpick and still nothing. Then all of a sudden, IT MOVES!

Hah! It was probably the coolest thing that I’ve seen at that point. It slowly clasped its leaves together. Securing the fly in place. I was excited and stared at it through the plastic casing. To my disappointment there was no crunching sound, no salivating or mastication being done. It was just sitting there. Guess it was a “Dracula plant” after all. I left it alone for the night and went to bed.

The next day after school I arrived home and rushed to check on the progress of the digestion. To my horror I discovered the plant covered in maggots. It looked like the maggots were eating the plant in return or something because it did not look healthy. I took it and showed it to my mother. Expecting her to explain what went wrong, comfort me or at least take me to buy me a new one; she looks at the plant, then at me, then the plant and back at me and says: “See! wasted money. Throw it out”.

I went outside and threw it out. I thought to myself that I had just killed it. I felt guilty for a bit, then I thought about all the insects it had tricked in the past. All those bugs that were fatally attracted to the plant’s beautiful colors and leaves. The circle of life I guess. I thought to myself: “Could there exist a plant that can actually grow as big as a tree and devour a person?”

In one of my books in my personal library, there’s an account of a man-eating tree that is said to have existed -or still does- in Central and Southern America. The rarely discussed “Ya-Te-Veo” tree. Or “I see you” tree.

According to the book, in J.W. Buel’s  “Land and Sea” (1887) there is the description of the “Ya-te-veo” tree. It is said to have long serrated vines and a short, thick trunk. The long vines are laid out all around the tree. The dagger-like teeth flat on the ground. When an unsuspecting victim, usually a medium-sized mammal, steps on its vines, they rise up like serpents and entangle the victim completely:

“The body is crushed until every drop of blood is squeezed out of it and becomes absorbed by the gore-loving plant. The dry carcass is thrown out and the horrid trap is set again.” – Unexplained Phenomena: A rough guide special. p. 282

It’s been said that these “Ya-te-veo” trees are known to exist in Central and Southern America as well as in parts of Africa and the shores of the Indian Ocean. Although these are just tales that such a plant or tree existed, there very well could have been a plant large enough, and menacing enough to eat and scare large mammals.

In 1881 there was a legend about a German explorer named Carl Liche who had written about a tree in Madagascar that was known as a “Man-eater”.

Liche is said to have seen the ferocious tree in action while spending time with the “Mkodo” tribe and witnessing a human sacrifice; in which a woman was being offered to the tree:

“The slender delicate palpi, with the fury of starved serpents, quivered a moment over her head, then as if instinct with demoniac intelligence fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms; then while her awful screams and yet more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down again into a gurgling moan, the tendrils one after another, like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity, rose, retracted themselves, and wrapped her about in fold after fold, ever tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anacondas fastening upon their prey.”

Decades later, author Willy Ley claimed that Mr. Liche was a made up character and that the “Mkodo” tribe never really existed. As for the Man-eating tree from Madagascar? It was deemed a myth.

Could it be possible to such a species of plant or tree to exist? After all, we do have Venus Fly Traps and the Nepenthes rajah, both of which consume insects and small animals. A prehistoric large carnivorous tree is not that far of a stretch. Maybe those types of trees do exist in the dark corners of some remote jungle. Maybe they’ve been seen only by those who were unfortunate enough to fall into its vines or trap. Leaving no witnesses.

Regardless of what spectrum of the Crypto-field your interests fall into, we can all agree that there are animals and plants that we’ve yet to discover. So make sure you treat your Venus Fly Traps right and don’t over feed them. They might just grow big enough to ensnare you one day.