This post is brought to you by Monster, Monster 2 and Monster 3 by G. W. Thomas. These collections are filled with posts from Dark Worlds Quarterly. In fact, they are the only way to read some of the early pieces written by GWT. Volume 1 looks at subjects from Slime Monsters, Alien Space Bats, Vampires in old creepy castles, out in space and even in fantasy fiction. Volume 2 has posts about writers like S. P. Meek and Francis Flagg as well as L. Sprague de Camp’s Pusadian fantasy and the Cthulhu Mythos. Each book is a semi-connected weave of Pulp and even older SF/F/H.
For many years I believed that H. G. Wells invented the man-eating plant in “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid” (Pall Mall Budget, August 2, 1894) but the truth was the idea was at least fifty years older. In a previous post I looked at some of the very first stories but here I want to collect the rest that appeared ahead of Wells. I haven’t included every kind of wondrous plant such as ghost stories like “The Giant Wisteria” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman (New England Magazine, June 1891 as Charlotte P. Stetson), but only those with a biological man-eating or killer plant element to them. (I’m not interested in trees that when cut fall into neat lumber piles or flowers with tiny people living in them either.)
The monster plant that appears throughout the Terror Garden are terrible but living things. In this sense, the killer tree is really a Science Fiction idea, not a Horror idea, though often the events are horrific. Clare Winger Harris included it in her list of Science Fiction tropes back in 1931. In this sense “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (The United States Magazine and Democratic Review, December 1844) by Nathaniel Hawthorne is the original deal, being an actual plant and person. Ghost stories with spirit animating plants are another idea completely, and may start with Perkins Gilman. “The Crime of Micha Rood” (The Cosmopolitan, January 1888) by Eli W. Peattie certainly is the same, with a ghost strangling a murderer with its roots. “Kildhurm’s Oak” (Belgravia, May-August 1880) by Julian Hawthorne explores the idea at short novel length. I’m not looking for ghosts here, only monsters.
“The American’s Tale” (London Society, Christmas Number 1880) by Arthur Conan Doyle is one of ACD’s earliest stories and because of this lacks much of his later ability. A group of Englishmen and Americans are on the verge of feuding over the words of a bully. When the man disappears they all go looking for him. He is found in the jaws of a giant Venus Flytrap (which grow in Arizona, of course). Doyle will explore his fascination with America in later Sherlock Holmes tales (but no monsters need apply.) For more on this story, go here.
“The Man-Eating Tree” (Under the Punkah, 1881) by Phil Robinson has a narrator tell his grandfather’s story of encountering a killer tree in Central Africa. While out hunting with three natives, he comes across a plant that snaps up Otona, the youngest guide while chasing an antelope.
“The vegetable first discovered my presence at about fifty yards distance. I then became aware of a stealthy motion among the thick-lipped leaves, reminding me of some wild beast slowly gathering itself up from long sleep, a vast coil of snakes in restless motion… I came within twenty yards of it. The tree was quivering through every branch, muttering for blood, and, helpless with rooted feet, yearning with every branch towards me…Each separate leaf was agitated and hungry. Like hands they fumbled together, their fleshy palms curling upon themselves and again unfolding, closing on each other and falling apart again, thick, helpless, fingerless hands rather lips or tongues than hands dimpled closely with little cup-like hollows. I approached nearer and nearer, step by step, till I saw that these soft horrors were all of them in motion, opening and closing incessantly.
“I was now within ten yards of the farthest reaching bough. Every part of it was hysterical with excitement. The agitation of its members was awful sickening yet fascinating. In an ecstasy of eagerness for the food so near them, the leaves turned upon each other. Two meeting would suck together face to face, with a force that compressed their joint thickness to a half, thinning the two leaves into one, now grappling in a volute like a double shell, writhing like some green worm, and at last faint with the violence of the paroxysm, would slowly separate, falling apart as leeches gorged drop off the limbs. A sticky dew glistened in the dimples, welled over, and trickled down the leaf. The sound of it dripping from leaf to leaf made it seem as if the tree was muttering to itself. The beautiful golden fruit as they swung here and there were clutched now by one leaf, and now by another, held for a moment close enfolded from the sight, and then as suddenly released. Here a large leaf, vampire-like, had sucked out the juices of a smaller one. It hung limp and bloodless, like a carcase of which the weasel has tired.
The grandfather shoots the tree over and over with his elephant rifle, killing it. The hunter and his two remaining guides pry the branches open to see Otona’s partly devoured corpse.
“The Balloon Tree” (The Sun, February 25, 1883) by Edward Page Mitchell has an expedition in the jungle searching for the Migratory Tree, plants that have shallow roots and can uproot themselves and move around. They are also called “Balloon Trees” because of a bladder that shoots out air and helps them relocate. Professor Quakversuch (possibly a joke using “quack”?) believes they even have intelligence. The Colonel, the narrator, gets separated and lost then saved in a dream-like state by a mothering tree. Leo Marguiles, the editor of the Winter 1973 Weird Tales, selected the tale and gave an introduction about Mitchell and how he “…may possibly reveal a previously unknown influence on H. G. Wells.”
Rondah; or Thirty-three Years in a Star (1887) by Florence Carpenter Dieudonné is a 19th century Science Fiction novel where four humans are transplanted to a distant star. On the alien world they encounter an island that is a living plant. Francis Stevens would do something similar in “Friend Island” (All-Story Weekly, September 7, 1918). Both works have a feminist element as did “The Giant Wisteria”. (Half of the authors listed here are women.)
“Carnivorine” (Peterson’s Magazine, October 1889) by Lucy H. Hooper is a difficult story to find since it hasn’t been reprinted as often as others. Which is hard to understand because Hooper does a first rate job. Ellis Graham is getting ready to go to Rome to work on his history of the Cenci family when the mother of an old friend asks him to tea. Mrs. Lambert is worried about her son, Julius, a botanist who has disappeared. She believes he may be near Rome. She also fears he may have fallen into the clutches of a female opportunist named “Carnivorine”. Graham agrees to look into it.
After no luck, the man accidentally stumbles on Julius in the rough Campagna area beyond the city. Lambert is living in a ramshackle old house covered in vines. Graham is invited to see what the great work Lambert has been working on: the cultivation of a creature that is the missing link between the animal and vegetable kingdoms.
The first thing that struck me faint rustling sound like that garment or a sweeping bird’s-wing. Then, by the light of the torch which Julius held on high, I discerned, in the centre of the room, a vast tub filled with masses of spongy moss, from which rose a strange plant—a hideous shapeless monster : a sort of vegetable hydra— or, rather, octopus—gigantic in size and repulsive in aspect and in coloring. So immense were its proportions, that it filled by itself the whole space of the conservatory. It consisted of a central bladder – shaped trunk or core, from which sprang countless branches — or, rather, arms — thick, leafless, of a livid green, and streaked with blotches of a dull – crimson. Each arm terminated in an oval protuberance which had a resemblance to the human eye.
Lambert has named this thing “Carnivorine”. Lambert is excited about the next step which will allow the beast to move around freely. Graham sees the brutish creature devour a chunk of meat before leaving in a hurry.
Much later, Graham feels guilty and returns to Campagna but Lambert doesn’t answer when he arrives. Looking in the window he sees:
At the end of the room, near the entrance to the conservatory, rose the hideous form of Carnivorine, no longer planted in a tub, but supported on what seemed, to me, a pair of paddle -like feet or paws like those of some misshapen antediluvian animal. The powerful branches—or, rather, tentacles—were upraised and closely folded around some central object. And at the summit of these livid green, closely- pressed, serpent -like stems appeared a ghastly object: it was a livid human head— the head of a corpse—and the pallid features were those of Julius Lambert!
The Englishman shoots the hybrid in the bladder, then cuts it into pieces and burns every piece along with Lambert’s notes. A loss for Science, but Graham figures it is a victory for humankind, since they won’t have to deal with mobile, killer plants. This last vision reminds me of Edmond Hamilton’s “The Plant Revolt” (Weird Tales, April 1930), where we get to see that very thing. Hamilton worked from a Wellsian formula but I have to wonder if he had not read “Carnivorine”.
Sea and Land (1889) by James W. Buel is a vast collection of information about the land and sea, some accurate, some not. On his chapter called “A Man-Eating Plant” he offers several carnivorous creatures. The first is a tree with lazy vine-like branches that rest of the ground. When humans step or lie on the branches they snap up and drive spikes into the victim as they are crushed. Every last drop of blood is squeezed out of the prey. The second variety is similar except the viny limbs are not set on the ground but wriggle about like snakes. This killer crushes its prey in a fashion similar to the Iron Maiden torture devise. The plant issues a hissing noise that resembles the Spanish “ya-ta-veo” or “I See You”, giving it this name.
Conclusion
Three years later Herbert George Wells would write “The Flowering of the Strange Orchid”, probably dashed off in a single night’s writing, as Wells was ought to do with his early tales. Wedderburn gets an exotic orchid found in the jungle by a man supposedly killed by leeches. Of course, the thing sprouts and sucks the Englishman’s blood. Wedderburn is saved by his housekeeper who smashes the greenhouse glass and exposes the vine to cold air. As killer plant stories go, it is rather tame.
He was lying, face upward, at the foot of the strange orchid. The tentacle-like aerial rootlets no longer swayed freely in the air, but were crowded together, a tangle of grey ropes, and stretched tight, with their ends closely applied to his chin and neck and hands.
This is not a gigantic brute with tentacles and a giant maw. It is a blood-sucking vine. Wells, as always is more interested in the odd humans in the tale. Wedderburn is a self-indulgent moron who had hoped to discover a new variety and get his name attached to it, and his housekeeper, Annie, who feels he ought to marry her. As a cautionary tale is seems to be saying: leave Science to the professionals.
Mythos Horror & Ghostbreakers at RAGE m a c h i n e
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