It’s a great place for a flesh-eater to hide out, unnoticed. British Columbia’s Cypress Provincial Park, overlooking West Vancouver to the south, has beautifully droopy yellow cypresses, with mountain hemlock and silvery fir for neighbors. Warblers, ravens, hawks, and woodpeckers fly above heathers, huckleberries, and ferns, where black bears, weasels, and coyotes pad past. Amid this profusion of life, a plant called Triantha occidentalis, or the western false asphodel, quietly waits to feast—though humans didn’t know what it was up to until now. A few years ago, a team of…
