It hides under the soil with a bottomless appetite for meat

As they journeyed, with no goal except to summit a mountain, the group members came across some climbing shoots that appeared pitcherless. But the hikers were sure they belonged to Nepenthes, a group that included hundreds of pitcher plant species, known for their characteristic of pitcher-shaped traps. A careful search turned up a few pitchers dangling in the air. Then, one group member found the mother lode beneath a moss cushion at a tree’s base: a cluster of maroon pitchers strung on a white, chlorophyll-lacking shoot.

“We were, of course, astonished,” said Dr. Dančák of Palacký University Olomouc in the Czech Republic. “Nobody would expect that a pitcher plant with underground traps could exist.”

Occasionally, pitcher plants are found growing traps that are covered by leaf litter or moss, but the traps are usually not functional, said Mr. Tjiasmanto, who is also a conservationist at the nonprofit Yayasan Konservasi Biota Lahan Basah in Indonesia. This new species, Nepenthes pudica, has evolved to grow subsurface traps that are specialized to lure and catch underground insects — “a really bizarre underground meat eater,” he said.