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Man-eating tree
Man-eating tree can refer to any of various legendary or cryptid carnivorous plants that are large enough to kill and consume a person or other large animal. In actuality, the carnivorous plant with the largest known traps is probably ''Nepenthes rajah'', which produces pitchers up to tall with a volume of up to .〔McPherson, S.R. 2009. ''Pitcher Plants of the Old World''. Redfern Natural History Productions Ltd., Poole.〕 This species may rarely trap small mammals.〔Phillipps, A. 1988. ''Carnivorous Plant Newsletter'' 17(2): 55.〕
==The Madagascar tree==
The earliest well known report of a man-eating tree originated as a literary fabrication written by Edmund Spencer for the ''New York World''. Spencer's article first appeared in the daily edition of the ''New York World'' on 26 April 1874, and appeared again in the weekly edition of the newspaper two days later. In the article, a letter was published by a purported German explorer named "Karl Liche" (also spelled as Carl Liche in later accounts), who provided a report of encountering a sacrifice performed by the "Mkodo tribe" of Madagascar: This story was picked up by many other newspapers of the day, including the South Australian Register of 27 October 1874, where it gained even greater notoriety. Describing the tree, the account related:
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.
The tree was given further publicity by ''Madagascar, Land of the Man-eating Tree'', a book by Chase Osborn, who had been a Governor of Michigan. Osborn claimed that both the tribes and missionaries on Madagascar knew about the hideous tree, and also repeated the above Liche account.
In his 1955 book, ''Salamanders and other Wonders'', science author Willy Ley determined that the Mkodo tribe, Carl Liche, and the Madagascar man-eating tree itself all appeared to be fabrications.
抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』
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