There must have been plenty of them about, growing up quietly and inoffensively, with nobody taking any particular notice of them–at least it seemed so, for if the biological or botanical experts were excited over them, no news of their interest percolated to the general public. And so the one in our garden continued its growth, as did thousands like it in neglected spots all over the world.
It was some little time later that the first one picked up its roots and walked.
-John Wyndham, Day Of The Triffids
Doctor Smith: Let him change me into an orchid, a papaya tree, a fragrant bougainvillea!
–Lost In Space, The Great Vegetable Rebellion
Less than a month ago, Santa Mira was like any other town. People with nothing but problems. Then, out of the sky, came a solution. Seeds drifting through space for years took root in a farmer’s field. From the seeds came pods which had the power to reproduce themselves in the exact likeness of any form of life.
–Invasion Of The Body Snatchers (1956)
Jess: Look at the giant tomato, Martha.
Martha: I didn’t know they grow’d them so big, Jess.
Jess: I wonder where he’s going. He got little Timmy.
Martha: Poor Timmy.
Jess: He ate him all up.
–Attack Of The Killer Tomatoes
The desert cabbage is not often found near the canals; it is a weed and not tolerated in the green sea bottoms of the lower latitudes, though it may be found in the deserts miles from any surface water. The western half of this specimen was still spread out in a semicircular fan, flat to the ground, but the eastern half was tilted up almost vertically, its flat leaves still reaching greedily for the Sun’s rays to fuel the photosynthesis by which plants live. A hardy plant, it would not curl up until the Sun was gone completely, and it would not withdraw into the ground at all. Instead it would curl into a tight ball, thus protecting itself from the cold and incidentally simulating, on giant scale, the Earth plant for which it was named.
Robert Heinlein, Red Planet
As I did stand my watch upon the hill,
I looked toward Birnam, and anon methought
The wood began to move.
–The Scottish play, Act V, Sc.5
Hermione had managed to free herself before the plant got a firm grip on her. Now she watched in horror as the two boys fought to pull the plant off them, but the more they strained against it the tighter and faster the plant wound around them.
“Stop moving!” Hermione ordered them. “I know what this is–it’s Devil’s Snare!”
–Harry Potter & The Sorcerer’s Stone
DOCTOR: Revolution’s going on down there.
THACKERAY: Revolution. Come now, Doctor. Are you choosing your words with care?
DOCTOR: Somehow the Krynoid can channel its power to other plants. All the vegetation on this planet is about to turn hostile.
THACKERAY: You mean like aggressive rhubarb?
DOCTOR: Yes, aggressive rhubarb.
–Doctor Who, The Seeds of Doom
I am Groot.
Little Shop of Horrors is one of my favorite musicals.
I’m happy to say, I don’t feed my plants very well, and they usually die in my care. I am not the problem!
I appreciate you being on the front lines between us and the plants.
And the plants shall inherit the Earth.
Since we got it from the plants–seriously, if plants hadn’t been here first animals couldn’t have evolved–it seems kind of fitting that they’ll inherit it back from us. And, as another song from Little Shop Of Horrors says, “The meek are gonna get what’s coming to ’em by and by.”
Do you consider me a plant in your audience, Chris? In any case, thanks for feeding us so well.
I don’t consider you a plant, but your comments certainly do sow seeds of happiness in me.