Rare slug-eating plant stolen

A PRICELESS plant that eats slugs has been stolen from a nursery in Austria.

The real-life Triffid, which consumes flesh in order to live, was engineered by Dutch scientists who pray that the abduction was the work of pranksters rather than rival botanical geneticists.

A copy of the plant could be worth an untold fortune in patents: slugs and other garden pests cost agriculture worldwide billions in losses each year and a predator plant is a potential gold mine.

Erich Preymann, 45, Austria’s most famous market gardener and flower showman, said: "I still hope that this was a prank played by some drunkards and the plant will be returned to me soon. On Tuesday morning I searched the whole area to see if somebody had brought it back in the night and left it somewhere on my property."

Mr Preymann persuaded the Netherlands laboratory that grew the plant - he refuses to name it - to allow him to exhibit it at the weekend in his nursery. A special laser alarm system was installed and Mr Preymann signed a contract in which he stated he would be liable to forfeit all his possessions if the plant were damaged or stolen.

He said: "I’m absolutely desperate as my business is my whole life. I invested millions of schillings into it since I started in 1994. Up to 15 people work for me during the main season. I fear professionals are at work because they side-stepped an alarm described as being among the best in the world."

The plant is one of just two examples of "arionescens", a hybrid of the sarracenia family of carnivorous pitcher plants. The other specimen is safe in the Dutch lab. The plant was engineered by scientists in the Netherlands where, Mr Preymann said, research is concentrated on making it sturdy enough to live in the wild.

The Dutch researchers say the plant lures slugs into the interior of its tube-shaped leaves.

They get stuck there and are slowly digested. Work is also under way to determine if the plant could be mass-produced.

"The plant’s got great scientific value. If the goal is achieved of sarracenia luring and destroying slugs in gardens, billions will be at stake economically," Mr Preymann said.

His worst fear was that the theft had been economic espionage. He was even prepared to pay a ransom, he said. The plant would be worthless to an ordinary thief, he pointed out, saying without extensive laboratory care it would die.