Image of beautiful marine animal Sea Pen passed off as Nagapushpa, a rare flower

A picture is going viral on social media that allegedly shows the Nagapushpa flower blooming once in 36 years. the text accompanying the viral image states that “the flower was spotted at 3:30 AM yesterday at Lake Mansarovar. The image shows the flower which is blooming in the shape of a snake in an upright position.”

Digiteye India received a request on WhatsApp to fact check this viral image.

FACT CHECK

The Digiteye India team used keywords and looked on social media platforms to see if we could gather more details about this alleged plant. Multiple tweets dating back to 2016 had already shared the same picture with similar claims. The tweets claim that the picture is of a Nagapushpa flower.

We cropped the image and ran a Reverse Image Search on Google. One of the results led us to a page that spoke about sea pens. We looked for Sea Pens and found the exact same image on a Reddit post dating back to 2021. The post mentioned that this was a sea pen.

The Sea Pen
byu/keanuDaOne ininterestingasfuck

We looked for more images of sea pens and found various types of sea pens that look like the viral image. Britannica describes sea pens as marine animals. It states that sea pens are, “Any of the 300 species of the order Pennatulacea, colonial invertebrate marine animals of the class Anthozoa (phylum Cnidaria). The name sea pen derives from their resemblance to quill pens. They occur in shallow and deep waters from polar seas to the tropics.”

We talked to Arijit Reeves, a researcher at Calcutta University, who said that “Sea pens can grow about 46 cm high and 102 mm wide. These marine animals have 20 pairs of flat and wide branches with rows of polyps on each branch and on both sides. Each polyp performs a different function. Some aid it in eating, defence, circulation, etc. They feed on small organisms.”

Mesua ferrea

A nagapushpa, on the other hand, is the Sanskrit name of the Ironwood Tree. The Latin name of the tree is Mesua ferrea. The tree is found in the Indo-Malayan region. The region includes most of South and Southeast Asia and into the southern parts of East Asia. They are evergreen trees with large, fragrant white flowers. The nagapushpa tree is the national tree of Sri Lanka. It is also the state tree of Mizoram and the state flower of Tripura.

CLAIM: The image shows a nagapushpa flower that blooms once in 36 years.

CONCLUSION: The image shows a sea pen which is a marine animal. The nagapushpa is an evergreen tree that grows in the Indomalayan region.

RATING:  Totally False —