In this modern age of organic produce, vegetarianism, veganism, and hyper awareness of climate change as it relates to the flora of our planet; it’s hard to imagine the existence of life without the green growing goodness of plants. While I love aliens that resemble animals, I have to admit science fiction and fantasy plants might be even more interesting.
Inspired by the coming of spring (any day now!) Tor.com recently asked people over Facebook and Twitter to tell us their favorite science fiction or fantasy foliage. There were some interesting responses, which I’ve included below in addition to some of my favorite SFF trees, plants, flowers and spores. But watch out, some of these plants can walk and talk!
Something I particularly liked about the topic of SFF plants was how many examples seemed to come from literature. The 1954 children’s book The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet depicts an invisible second moon, which orbits the Earth. This planetoid is covered in various types of space mushrooms. Though populated by little green people, these aliens are sadly, not also mushrooms.
Larry Niven’s Known Space series gives us the Stage Trees. Essentially these are plants that are genetically engineered to be solid-fuel rockets. Beginning their lives as “stage bushes,” when ignited they will blast off and send seeds blowing in every direction! If the stage tree gets to its much larger life cycle it becomes a multi-stage rocket nearly half a mile tall. These rockets will eventually blast off and spread their seeds onto distant worlds capable of supporting life.
Naturally, many of you mentioned Tolkien and there are a lot of special plants in Middle-earth! From Aegolos, to pipe-weed, to Seregon, a Hobbit botanist would have quite a bit of cataloging! But of course the most memorable plants from The Lord of the Rings books are those walking talking Ents! These sentient trees are easily the greatest of talking plants that are also on the team of the good guys. Hey Saruman, put that in your pipe-weed and smoke it!
Over in the world of TV and film, sentient plants are everywhere. Fan-favorite Farscape gave us the Delvian species of which Zotoh Zhann was a member. Just like conventional plants need light to survive, Delvians get seriously excited and turned on by the light from a sun and as such, they have photogasms.
The Ninth Doctor seemed familiar with the intelligent species known as the Trees of Cheem in the episode “The End of the World.” One member of this species, Jabe, even gave her life to help the Doctor stop Cassandra’s evil plot.
Because Hogwarts is located right near a forest, it makes sense that the world of Harry Potter and his pals is teaming with fantastical plant life. The terrific trio is almost devoured by the tendrils of a Devil’s Snare in the first book. Though Hermione manages to take out the Snare using a spell that looks a lot like sunlight. (I thought plants liked sun?) Hogwart’s also has a gigantic tree called The Whomping Willow, which nearly destroys Harry and Ron and their flying car in The Chamber of Secrets. Notably, all Hogwarts students also have to deal with something called mandrakes; a kind of restorative plant that shrieks when harvested. Hearing an adult mandrake can kill a human, muggle or wizard alike!
Finally, there are three science fiction plants that are so infamous that they had to be included at the end of our brief list. The first are the Omicron spores from the 60s Star Trek episode, “This Side of Paradise.” Other than sharing a title with a novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald, this episode depicted alien plants that shot spores into your face if you got too close. After you got hit with the spores, you would turn into a laughing lunatic and desert the Enterprise. We’ll give you one guess as to which character has to show these plants who is really in charge.
The second of the infamous SF plants is the Audrey II from all forms of the story Little Shop of Horrors. Originally a 1960 B-movie (with Jack Nicholson in a bit role!) then later a musical, and then a movie-musical directed by Frank Oz, the story of the plant that eats human flesh is one of the most popular tales of all time. Don’t believe us? Then how come EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN HIGH SCHOOL performs this musical at some point? How many Seymours, Audreys and Audrey II’s did you grow up with?
But, the SF plant mentioned more than any others was easily John Wyndham’s Triffids, from Day of the Triffids. Though the origins of these carnivorous plants are expressly NOT thought to be extraterrestrial, we still like to think of Triffids as the sort of Daleks of plants. Can’t you just hear the Triffids screaming “EXTERMINATE!” at some poor guy with a spray bottle of Round-Up? In any case, I agree with the Facebook/Twitter responses when it comes to SFF plants; the Triffids are number one.
Of course, let me know what was missed!
Ryan Britt is a regular blogger for Tor.com. His work has been published with Opium Magazine, Clarkesworld Magazine and elsewhere.
The plant men of Barsoom! Of all the creatures of Mars that John Carter battled, the plant men were among the scariest. Ravenous, omnivorous, with mouths in their palms and never giving up the fight.
Speaking of Niven, I was always a fan of the ‘Sunflowers’ on the Ringworld. Nothing like a plant that can shoot a frickin’ laser beam.
Stage trees were great, but then there’s also the Integral trees that orbit Levoy’s Star – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Integral_Trees
Filif, from Diane Duane’s “Young Wizards” series.
http://youngwizards.com/ErrantryWiki/index.php/Filif
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_Wizards#Filif
I love Diane Duane’s “alien” wizards, Filif possibly most of all. He’s like a sentient Christmas tree, and he has some kind of “modesty” magic to cover his roots.
Also, there’s a minor appearance of a rowan tree in the first book So You Want to Be a Wizard. The main characters in this book are attuned one to nature, one to mechanical life.
Brian Aldiss’s Hothouse aka The Long Afternoon of Earth aka The Sun Is Dying is set on a far future Earth where a single banyan covers the earth, almost all life is vegetation with odd names, and humanity is a fifth the size of current humans, and green.
I strongly recommend Alan Dean Foster’s Mid-World and Mid-Flinx,
set on a planet which is covered by rain forest. The first book has
excellent invented plants– the second book was written after Foster had visited a rain forest and has more of the immersive sensory experience.
The Houses of Ism and Son of the Tree by Jack Vance.
A novel which was serialized in Analog but whose author and title I can’t remember which took place among people climbing a gigantic tree.
Niven’s The Integral Trees— really big trees in microgravity.
The most powerful plant of all may be Korval’s tree in the Liaden universe.
Though populated by little green people, these aliens are sadly, not also mushrooms.
But they were spore people, whatever that entailed.
In my family we call Xanth the pillow-bush books. Xanth has many interesting plants. Pillows, pies and panties grow on trees or bushes. The tangle-tree is a relative of the Whomping Willow. Cherries and pineapples are bombs. Justin Tree is a man transformed into a tree by a magician. Here are more Xanth plants:
http://www.reocities.com/daxloves2/XanthTree.html
http://capn1.tripod.com/xanth/lexicon.html
#2 Niven’s Sunflowers get my vote too!
I also remember some very peculiar vegetation in Dan Simmons’ Hyperion Cantos. There’s Tesla trees, Treeships, and my favorite, Dyson Trees.
@Nancy Lebovitz
You may be thinking of Class Six Climb by William Cochrane, IMS, it came out late 70s or early 80s
Swamp Thing.
Looking for the title of a book I read as a teen (’70’s – ’80’s) where the astronauts-scouts landed on a planet with nothing but plants, but unbeknownst to them, the plants communicated planet-wide through their roots, and plotted to destroy the astronauts so they wouldn’t come back and (harvest them? destroy them for some other reason?). I can’t remember much of the plot, or the name (obviously). Any ideas? It may have been made into a movie.
The killer tulips and sexually voracious orchids in John Boyd’s ‘The Pollinators of Eden’ surely one of the oddest SF books ever written…