Monster Plants and the Humans who Invent Them | Monstrum
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2022
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For millennia humans have turned to plants to heal the sick and wounded, to ward against evil, and grant magical powers. But what happens when plants themselves become conscious, and turn killers?
The world is full of monsters, myths, and legends and Monstrum isn’t afraid to take a closer look. The show, hosted by Emily Zarka, Ph.D., takes us on a journey to discover a new monster in each new episode. Monstrum looks at humans' unique drive to create and shape monster mythology through oral storytelling, literature, and film and digs deep into the history of those mythologies.
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Written and Hosted by: Dr. Emily Zarka
Director: David Schulte
Executive Producer: Amanda Fox
Producer: Thomas Fernandes
Editor/Animator: P.W. Shelton
Illustrator: Samuel Allan
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Director of Programming (PBS): Gabrielle Ewing
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Music: APM Music
Descriptive Audio & Captions provided by The Described and Captioned Media Program
Produced by Spotzen for PBS Digital Studios.
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Bibliography
Chang, Elizabeth Hope. Novel Cultivations: Plants in British Literature of the Global Nineteenth Century, University of Virginia Press, 2019.
Darwin, Erasmus. The botanic garden, part II. containing the loves of the plants, a poem. With philosophical notes. Volume the second. J. Jackson, 1789.
Emboden, William A. Bizarre Plants: magical, monstrous, and mythical. Macmillan Publishing Co., 1974.
Foersch, N. P. "Natural History of the BOHON-UPAS, Or POISON-TREE of the Island of JAVA." The New Wonderful Magazine and Marvellous Chronicle, vol. 2, no. 13, 1794, pp. 79-86.
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “Rappaccini’s Daughter.”
Howe, Andrew. “Monstrous Flora: Dangerous Cinematic Plants of the Cold War Era.” The Green Thread: Dialogues with the Vegetal World, edited by Patrícia Vieira, et al., Lexington Books, 2015, pp. 147-164.
Miller, T.S. “Plants, Monstrous.” The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters, edited by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Ashgate Publishing, 2014.
Lehner, Ernst and Johanna. Folklore and Symbolism of Flowers, Plants, and Trees. Tudor Publishing Company, 1960.
Marsden, William. The history of Sumatra, containing an account of the government, laws, customs, and manners of the native inhabitants, with a description of the natural productions, and a relation of the ancient political state of that island. By William Marsden, ... Printed for the author, and sold by Thomas Payne and Son; Benjamin White; James Robson; P. Elmsly; Leigh and Sotheby; and J. Sewell, 1783.
Swift, Jonathan. The Wonderful magazine, and marvellous chronicle; or, New weekly entertainer. A work recording authentic accounts of the most extraordinary productions, events, and occurrences, in providence, nature, and art. ... Vol. 2, C. Johnson, no. 14, 1793.
Miller, T. S. “Lives of the Monster Plants: The Revenge of the Vegetable in the Age of Animal Studies.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 23, no. 3 (86), 2012, pp. 460.
Miller, T.S. “Plants, Monstrous.” The Ashgate Encyclopedia of Literary and Cinematic Monsters, edited by Jeffrey Andrew Weinstock, Ashgate Publishing, 2014.
Price, Cheryl Blake. “Vegetable Monsters: Man-Eating Trees in Fin-de-Siécle Fiction.” Victorian Literature and Culture, vol. 41, no. 2, 2013, pp. 311-27.
Ryan, John Charles. “Tolkien’s Sonic Trees and Perfumed Herbs: Plant Intelligence in Middle-earth.” The Green Thread: Dialogues with the Vegetal World, edited by Patrícia Vieira, et al., Lexington Books, 2015, pp. 37-58.
Swift, Jonathan. The Wonderful magazine, and marvellous chronicle; or, New weekly entertainer. A work recording authentic accounts of the most extraordinary productions, events, and occurrences, in providence, nature, and art. ... Vol. 2, C. Johnson, no. 14, 1793.
“The Vampire Vine.” The Review of Reviews. United Kingdom, Office of the Review of Reviews, 1891.
Williams Jericho. “An Inscrutable Malice: The Silencing of Humanity in The Ruins and The Happening.” Plant Horror: Approaches to the Monstrous Vegetal in Fiction and Film, edited by Dawn Keetley and Angela Tenga, Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016, pp. 227-242.
I remember using killer plants to defend my house from a horde of zombies.
_Were they attacking your lawn too?_
damn that is so smart,
the ZOMBIES .... are coming
You did that, too? 🤜🤛
Cute killer plants singing "There's a zombie on your lawn".
Now we need a episode on all the flesh abominations/Things/mutated cancer blobs/etc. This type of monster beacame popular in recent times and it made me curious where the whole idea where it came from.
Watch it become a capitalism sucks sermon. Or how to fix Healthcare sermon.
@@Demolitiondude projecting much?
@@Demolitiondude wtf are you babbling about?
@@thenegativoneify her political bias.
I'd love to see an episode on this subject too! I think it's fair to say the idea of a "slime" creature, as depicted in RPG-type video games comes from the idea of an amoeba being large enough to be visible to the naked eye, rather than under a microscope, as opposed to coming from classical mythology.
Also, many "slime" creatures tend to borrow from the movie "The Blob" which takes influence from a real-life phenomenon known as "Star Jelly"
Regardless, I'd love to see a video more in depth on this channel.
I grew up on the southern United States and we had the invasive species Kudzu which absorbs abandoned cars, telephone poles, and even homes. A simple image search online will show you how invasive it really is. Under ideal conditions, kudzu can grow one foot per day.
"Invasion of the Body Snatchers", "Day of the Triffids", and both "Little Shop of Horrors" movies were favorites of my childhood.
I had nightmares about kudzu as a kid. 😶
The best way to combat kudzu is with goats. They eat it.
Oh gosh. I grew up in Ohio, and when I came down to Georgia and then to South Carolina, I got to learn all about kudzu. And then people tried to bring "Kudzu beetles" to eat the vines, and well, there's far more delicious things for them to eat. Yay! Invasive species!
My dad grew up in New Albany Mississippi, northern Mississippi about 100 miles from Memphis. Kudzu is all over the region. Many of the state and national forests are over taken by the vine. I didn't realize it was in other areas of the south. I know it totally ruins the property value if Kudzu is nearby. And they always said to use goats to combat the vine.
I had those "You Might be a Redneck if..." books when Jeff Foxworthy became famous...yeah, I loved them and, even being from California, could find several pages that showed I myself was a little "pink around the collar." One of them I remember was "You might be a redneck if you've ever lost a loved one to kudzu."
The Little Shop of Horrors is the definitive movie that started my obsession for collecting pitcher plants and venus flytraps. The DC comic's Swamp Thing is another plant/environment-themed monster hero. I grew up reading the comics and watching the movies.
Monster plants are also a staple of DC villainess turned on/off anti-heroine Poison Ivy.
I really hope we get a Voodoo Dolls episode in this series. Mainly because it would be a great semi-sequel to the Haitian Zombies episode. Actually, maybe this could probably be expanded into a new trilogy of videos. The first one Voodoo Dolls, the second one Killer/Living Dolls and the final episode could be Robots.
Yesssss, I would love to see that! I hope they do it
@@taylorfusher2997 dude, wth? Why are you spamming with this wall of text? Also I doubt anyone is actually gonna read whatever you just wrote because it’s a wall of text-
the dolls were actually in use in European folklore, before somehow being attributed to the practice of Voodoo, but they don't originate from Voodoo at all
@@driftingdruid I know that.
Yeah and also on covering Freddy Fazebear and the Gang.
I like the Blights from DnD. Sentient, monsterous plants that originate from a stake used to kill a vampire, which was then corrupted by the vampire's blood and spawned this tree which then spawns these Blight plants, which in a way are kinda like undead plants, which I think is really cool. They really just want what all plants want, but goes about it in a way that will quickly transform the land into a corrupted, overgrown, toxic hellscape.
Thats a dope lore mix.
@@taylorfusher2997 I'm sorry, but just what made you decide to post that here?
@@taylorfusher2997 Has it ever occurred to you that there might be a reason for that? Wall of text posts scan as off-putting and intense in an uncomfortable way, which is why most people won’t read them, much less respond to them. Spamming them all over a comment section reads like desperate attention seeking. I’m sure there’s something you need, and unless you get it through perplexed responses to the things you post (Colin Robinson, is this you?), this is not the way.
Those nightmarish plants from The Ruins are worth mentioning - just terrifying. The Vegetable Lambs of Tartary, Sachamamas, Yeduas and Stray Sods are examples of less aggressive but older plant based creatures, but in Japanese mythology I believe there is more than one example of man-eating tree yōkai that grow on the blood-soaked soil of battlefields. Anyway, great videos as always! Such an awesome approach to exploring monsters ... can't wait for the next one!
The Ruins is such a great horror book. Definitely made me afraid of vines for quite some time aftervI read it.
The fact the plants can mimic sounds is like their way to hunt for prey
@@Ryanmanification yes. Their hive mind/mentality too makes them formidable.
I made one of those old wooden directional signs on my property and had a bunch of strange cryptid/lore on it. One of them was Stray Sod!
@- Zorkaz
The Japanese have a plant monster. It’s Biollante.
"Maneater of Hydra" -- Best ever movie about the love between a man and his genetically modified vampire tree.
I think my first exposure to killer plants was in Jumanji. And considering it was the big yellow one trying to eat Peter that made me realize WHY I stopped watching when I was younger, it must've really left an impression.
'They grow much faster than bamboo. Take care or they'll come after you'
- Jumanji, 1995
We used to have a big duhat tree at home, and it certainly was very monstrous in how it covered our yard in a purple blanket of pulp and seed every summer. Slipping and falling was a very real danger.
Slipping and falling is how it catches you 😉
Nostalgic!!
Sorry man. :(
Neat how you mentioned Piranha Plants! (I think more along the lines of Zelda’s Deku Babas myself, but Piranha plants are probably more famous.)
Don't forget some of the human-shaped, plant-based swamp monsters from popular culture. Still often considered monsters, but not always antagonists. There's the monster in Theodore Sturgeon's short story "It". As well as comic book characters like The Heap, Swamp Thing and the Man-Thing.
Recently Marvel had a bonanza with plants: The Empyre event had alien plants attacking Earth. The "evil Golden Girls of gardening" known as Hodreculture are aged women who are eco-terrorists who use plant-based tech. Two different nations who use bio-tech that's plant based (called Floronics in comics), one nation is Krakoa...which is based on the "Island that walks like a man", the sentient Krakoa (hence the nation's name)
Krakoa itself is a power-up of 'evil plants' as it's a sentient island that's a collective of both flora and fauna. It was introduced as a mutated island that changed after nuclear bombs radiated it. It feeds on mutant energies and captured the original X-Men, thus why Xavier went and recruited characters like Storm, Colossus, Wolverine, Nightcrawler, Banshee, Sunfire & Thunderbird, creating the 2nd class of "All-new, all-different" X-Men.
I thought I was the only one who remembered The Heap!
There's also a tree in Thai lore that spawns human-shaped fruit who are so beautiful humans have sex with it and lose their energy/life in the process.
Resident Evil had the infamous Plant 42. Sentient plants are always terrifying.
I would like all these chapters to be in the future season of Monstrum.
*Sea Serpents
*Leviathan
*The Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow ✅
*Phantom Vehicles
*Boogeyman
*Ghosts
*Possessed Dolls
*Shadow People
*Undead
*Goblins
*Bigfoot
*Man-Eating Plants ✅
*Killer Clowns
*Killer Robots
*Swamp Monsters
*The Mummy
*Scarecrows
*The Invisible Man
*Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde
*Merfolk
*Demons
*Skeletons
*Jack O'Lantern
*Gnomes
*Sea Monsters that attacked Submarines
*Alien Abductions ✅
*Ogres
*Ghouls
*Lich
*Cyborgs
*Witches
*Kaiju
*Cthulhu ✅
*The Rake
Yeah I'd love an episode on all of them
Related to the ghosts, I’d like one on haunted houses.
The Body Snatchers still creeps me out decades later.
The 1978 version is the first horror or scary movie I saw in the cinema. I was 14 and If I had had a plant in my bedroom back then, I would have moved it out.
@@SlyPearTree Yep; along with The Thing and The Fly, Invasion… is one of the all-time best horror remakes.
Yup, not many movies bother me, but that one did!
Haven’t seen the movies, but read about them; as popular as Zombie apocalypses are now, body snatchers seem much scarier!
One monstrous plant that comes to my mind (other than Audrey II) is the Tree from Junji Ito's "Splatter Film". In that story, a group of people have been taking honey from a tree from South America that was worshipped as a god. When they eat too much of the honey, they're literally squashed like bugs. The tree's branch is so long, it can reach anywhere in the world, and eating its honey is like a mosquito drinking blood from people.
Oooo I don't remember that one. Got a link for me? I love me some Ito-sempai. (Tomie! Tomie! Tomie!)
@@Lady_Chalk The original short story can be found in the manga compilation "Smashed: Junji Ito Story Collection". There's an anime adaptation of it called "Smashed" in "Junji Ito Collection". I know it's on Crunchyroll and Funimation (though the latter is merging with the former)
Also worth noting: there are lots of real plants which kill rivals for water and nutrients by poisoning the soil around themselves. The walnut tree is a well known example.
I had forgotten that this used to be a thing, I loved Little Shop of Horrors as a kid! And there was an 80's cartoon called Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors where the bad guys were evil plants, it was awesome. Then my English teacher played Day of the Triffids in class (Video day!!). Thank you, Storied, for throwing me back there and educating me at the same time 😅
Dangerous plants is still a thing and it's still campy. Just look at comics. Marvel had a field day in 2020/21 with plant based themes. Epmyre event covered the alien invading plants. X-Men move to live on a living island that makes it's main sentience take the form of a giant tree. X-Men get new villians called Hordeculture, often called by fans as "evil Golden Girls" who are eco-terrorists who use plant-based technology. There's another nation that used plant-based bio-tech, a botched move by mad scientist the beast who tried to control rivals from this nation, but the plant spores mutated and turned the humans into plant monsters.
I mean. Nature IS scary! Giant hogweed, anyone? Yikes!
But it's certainly fascinating to understand the roots of this kind of monster.
Pun absolutely intended!
7:15 I'm not saying there wasn't racism, but from a narrative stand-point, it makes more sense to introduce a plant from somewhere that the reader has never been/seen if you want it to be otherworldly. "Oh, this is a flower that grows here in London... you've just never seen it... and it eats lots of people... don't know why no one has ever talked about it before..." It's just better story telling, no need to search for more if there isn't any present.
Usually it makes sense but this one felt like a bit of a stretch. I would guess there are thousands of undocumented plants species in the world's rainforests to this day.
It's really fun to learn how much of our collective mythology and arcana came from stuff just looking weird and cool.
Never underestimate human imagination. 😉
Like ginseng. All its supposed benefits come from the vaguely humanlike form of the root
@@PabloSanchez-qu6ib Kind of like mandrake, as well.
Hi doctor Emily, love your content. Can you please talk about some of Tolkien's monsters?
I find the balrog quite fascinating.
YES, great idea!!!
I'm a fan of the Ents.. kinda fits this plant video.
@@St.Linguini_of_Pesto Me too!
My man I would like to hear about orcs too
@@taylorfusher2997 What tf does this have to do with the Balrog?
In the movie Jumangi, there was a a scene where the vines would grow incredibly fast, the purple flowers shot poisonous barbs and the giant yellow flowers would grab you with their vines and swallow you whole. I truly believed these plants existed as a kid and I avoided flowers for a long time because of this movie
@@taylorfusher2997 what does this have to do with murderous plants?
@@jordantoczek3237 It's a bot, leaving the same reply on most comments.
I love this series (monsters / Monstrum), Dr. Z. Keep up the infotainment.
I'm not sure if this counts, but I remember my first introduction to monster plants was R. L. Stine's "Stay Out of the Basement" (original Goosebumps book), as I got to experience the horror of a plant looking almost identical to a human, save for a few...clues that give it away.
Meatcanyon is fond of that book too.
Yes! Someone who references the books and not the tv show!
This might be an odd request but for thw next Monstrum video...Unicorns! Hey, if you guys made a video about griffins (which aren't really scary but majesty) why not a unicorn? There's some weird history behind them too, like having red heads and the tip of their horns being black. Maybe dive into how they became a supposedly mysterious animal, to a symbol of purity in christianity, to its more cartoony modern (and sometimes scary) depiction.
Yeah an episode on unicorns and even pegasus would be lit.
Also, this reminds me of the killer unicorn in "The Cabin in the Woods" 😂
I love Dr. Zarka's voice- could listen to her all day...
Was holding out hope that Biollante would get a special mention, respect!
Same! That monster’s #finalform inflicted some serious damage to Godzilla before The Big Guy managed to pull victory out of his cloaca. 🦎🦖
The Day of the Triffids has another interpretation, and it relates to earlier themes: the Triffids are exploited for their oil (used by many people for many purposes), able to move but confined and fenced in. When a natural event just happens to cause their oppressors to become disadvantaged - blind to them - they revolt and take over.
To me, this is a book about colonialism. About not exploiting people, lest they retaliate when the time is right, and that civilians who utilise the spoils of colonialism are as such partially responsible for it.
Like most great books, it's open to multiple interpretations, but yes, your take is supported by the title, which references the saying 'every dog shall have its day'.
@@JennieKermode yeah, that's why I was careful to say "another" interpretation and "to me"! I do think it warrants a bit more than "exotic plants and cold war", though. Bit too surface-level for something that actually makes the plants rather common across the globe within its universe rather than exotic, and the Soviet origin is only part of the 1982 TV series.
I remember my first exposure to the Killer Plant trope in horror was from R.L Stein
Correction, The plant is only called Audrey Jr. in the FIRST movie. In the Broadway and 1986 movie based on it, the plant is Audrey II.
Also, in the first movie, the plant has an additional power, it can hypnotize people when they refuse to help it voluntarily.
And, of course, most people know the 1986 movie originally DID end with the plant winning (same as the Broadway play) but audiences didn't like that ending, so they hastily make a new one.
I've written my Master's Dissertation on plant monsters in literature! This one's going to be interesting! :D
This was an absolutely fabulous episode. I've always adored botanical folklore.
I am currently raising some Cobra Lilies and Venus fly traps. And I remember seeing this carnivorous plant called sundews. They have like these tentacles that has the sticky substance that in traps insects. And just to think you would think only Japanese school girls would have to worry about anything with tentacles.
It's a long time since I read it, but my memory of The Day of the Triffids is very different to the description in this video... Possibly the video describes the movie rather than the book. As I recall, in the book the mass blinding was caused by an orbital weapon system (making a spectacular light show to draw the eye of everyone on Earth, while simultaneously emitting intense ultraviolet light to burn out everyone's retinas); and the Triffids were bioengineered by oil companies.
Oh, and no account of monster plants in pop culture can be complete without at least a few comments mentioning: the 'Man-Eater of Surrey Green', the killer alien plant in an episode of The Avengers, and its close relation the Krynoid from Doctor Who's 'The Seeds of Doom'.
So glad Day of the Triffids got a mention!!!
Hey Dr Emily, can you make an episode about the Jersey devil, one about the kongamato, and one about the kelpie?
Nothing makes my day like a new Monstrum video.
This channel has some of the best consistent content around. Thank you so much!
"Feed me, Seymour!"
I loved this episode mostly cuz I am a huge fan of plant powers
I feel mandrakes should have had a bigger emphasis. Yeah, they're real life plants, but their relationship with fiction and mythology is so big, they deserved to be talked about more.
Enough for a stand alone episode I think. I would enjoy that, good call!!
This was so good. Dr. Zarka does such an amazing job. I've recently gotten into carnivorous plants as a hobby, this is so timely!
Brilliant. I really like the amount of digging into the history that y'all put into these videos. This was definitely my favorite vid of all the ones I've watched so far.
If you ever do a second part to this video it would be so cool to mention DC’s Poison Ivy and how different adaptations of her abilities represent different anxieties of the natural world at the time.
I love watching time lapse video of plants. Especially in areas where plants make up most of the biodiversity like forests. You get a real sense of how "vicious" plants can actually be. Just because they seem to be peacefully moving on the human scale, time lapse shows just how much of a cut throat arms race it is.
I loved The Day of the Triffids. John Wyndham's books were criticized by some as cozy catastrophes, but sometimes that's just the kind of story you need.
@@taylorfusher2997 WTF
I was a bit disappointed they didn't mention any female plant monsters like the Alraune But it was still nice to hear about plant monsters My absolute favorite references are Audrey 2 from a little shop of horrors and biollante from one of the godzilla movies
Justice for Biollante
I will never get over it. It is not only terrible that there are books in a fireplace, but also how they lie there!
There is a plant more specifically, a vine, which I have heard lives of animals it indirectly kills. Supposedly, it has sharp needles or thorns. They also twist in such a way that hapless travelers get entangled and die of either starvation or strangulation. The vine then lives off of the decomposition of victim’s bodies.
This channel is pure gold for Dungeons and Dragons campaign ideas. Great work. 😀
I'm watching this and thinking, "This has got to piss off the Dynamite Tree and the Manchineel Tree. Both are real live man killers."
Love your shows about monsters and mystery around them.
I think the best example of a killer plant Was in the junji Ito comic smashed where the plant was killing people who ate it Sapp. The tree would squish them like people squish mosquitoes.
I love this series so much! Would y’all consider putting out audio-only versions as a podcast on platforms like Spotify?
Thanks for the acknowledgement of Biollante. That one is underrated and perhaps among the most interesting film kaiju in origins.
That movie is kinda bonkers, even for a Godzilla flick. It’s good though, and Biollante’s #finalform inflicted some serious damage to the Big Guy before he pulled rank as the King of the Monsters. 👑
I love your videos and I love your Bloopers. Please keep up the amazing work!
Monstrum is my favorite 🤩, thanks for the upload!
I'm SOOO glad you mentioned the Madagascar Tree, or Septopus!!! 😄
Great work Thank you
The art this episode is 🔥🔥
I would also like to mention the plant monster known as the Alraune! It is a weird plant monster that modern media often depicts as effeminate in appearance, mostly due to its origins. It was said to have been produced from a dead man's... spermatozoa... that dripped into the earth, and the earth in turn absorbed it (though in some cases, blood). Because of its very specific origins, Alraune of the modern media were shown to closely resemble that of femme fatales or any kind of "seductive" female humanoid who lures in its prey with beauty, eventually killing them as they 'feast' on their life force.
Once again a very interesting video thanks.
Great video! Now I need to read day of the Triffids again.
Dr. Emily Zarka you're wonderful.
good of you to mention doyle and wells. i would also add clark ashton smith, whose use of the monster plant is a metaphor for his youth when he worked in a farm. also "the garden of fear" by robert e. howard, and some stories by william hope hodgson. there is also an interesting carnivorous plant in "werewolf of london" from 1935
Well done and very interesting....
Great topic🌱
I never thought I would see Tabonga show up on Monstrum. Outstanding episode, as per usual
Great video!
Amazing video
I read Monster Pants at first and got pretty excited won't lie. Great video as always, keep up the amazing work.
YES! I was waiting for Biollante to come up!
Dr Z, I know you favour Mothra, she's the queen after all, but the lil' sister of Godzilla is the one that got my heart.
Great video.
So many Audreys. ;)
My sister was in a high school production of Little Shop of Horrors. And then I dubbed the big rose plant that WoULdn'T Die and I seemed to always step on its thorns, not the other half dozen rose plants in the garden. (It was a wild rose type, unlike Mom's tea roses, so the thorns were easy to tell. And it had gotten cut down to the roots at least once. It didn't die.)
Yes, often times roses will come back from their roots if cut or deep-frozen. The issue with hybrid teas and other garden types is they are often grafted onto a stronger root stock, so if that root isn't buried properly or the upper graft dies, you'll get the root stock plant and not the original you planted!
@@RealBradMiller this one may've started as a wild rose; it was there taking over the fence when we moved in.
@@eliscanfield3913 Nice! I love the single flowering roses the best, and so do the pollinators!
There's a brilliant purple one next to our garage. Such a nice, deep color!
I think Lovecraft's Shoghofts should get some love too, considering Lovecraft inspired Campbell's who goes there Another thing to consider would be the human plant hybrids of Swamp Thing and Man thing as well as their dnd equivalents the Shambling Mound
Day of the Triffids is a good one to watch.
I’d love to see an episode on mummies or swamp monsters!
I’ve always found the monster plant to be amazing a way of natures supernatural revenge
That was one thing I was wondering when you were going to talk about it and surprised you hadn't done it until now.
glad you touched on this. and I have had venus flytraps and sundews before they can be hard to grow might I suggest the nepenthes or highland pitcher plants they are beautiful and eerie. some of which are actually big enough to eat rats or mice lol.
Great episode. I wish you had the time to cover killer plants in D&D. Some of them are very similar to ones you covered, but the yellow musk creeper deserves a mention.
What about one on "fearsome critters" type creatures but beyond just that book. Creatures of fokelore and practical jokes such as the jackalope and Australian drop bear. Things that prey more on gullibility than people but occasionally turn out to have some real world origin.
My class was trying to figure out the symbolism of the island filled with carnivorous kelp in Life of Pi. I was shocked when one of my classmates said that maybe, since the whole novel is pro-vegetarian, the island is a way to ask "what if the roles were reversed?" Anyways, I just backed the Murderbirds anthology so if anyone knows of any murder plants anthologies (especially if they're historical) I'd love to know! Also, if you ever decide to make a video on it, there are so many evil shapeshifting or vampiric nocturnal birds in world mythology. My favorites are wereowls
There's an old story of a ship captain talking to a man on a rowboat off in the distance, he tells them of an island he crashed on with his wife and how they were both having problems, at the end it shows his profile and you can see he is slowly turning into a moss/mushroom creature.
The entire island was overrun by some mycelia, it was such a cool story!
A tree that grows human heads is terrifying
I love when it's Monstrum day!
I feel like that this trope of man eating plants is not appricated enough now o days. I cant remamaber the last time I have seen any plant monster in any major role except maybe Groot, but he is cute and friendly, not a deadly monster.
The second i read "Monster Plants", my brain starting singing "Feed me Seymour" XD
As a botanist, gardener and conservationist trying to control invasive plants this has me nerding out.
There is a really creepy 2017 film called "Flora". You don't actually see the plants move, but they constantly change the surroundings preventing encroaching scientists from further invading their home. Very suspenseful.
Damn, you got me side-eyeing my window plants hanging in there macramé swings. You win this round Dr. Emily.
I have a page of notes to further research for a mystery game we're making! Thanks for all the fascinating facts.
Love it.
Fascinating. I'm surprised you didn't mention Edith Nesbit's The Pavilion. A neat little plant horror story.
Awesome video! I'm reminded of a modern example: Smashed by Junji Ito.
I was expecting a mention of The Happening, but wow, I had no idea their was so much killer plant material to reference!
Oh gnarly!
I remember reading a story by August Derleth where there is a murder in a room in a house that has vines stretching across it. While the sleuth and his partner are over looking by staying the night they learn it's the vines outside the room that committing the murders.
There’s a street near me named Upas St. It’s in an area where all the streets have tree names, in alphabetical order (ash, beech, etc). How fun that it was originally a murderous exotic plant!
I *love* the 80s Little Shop of Horrors! I you get the blur-ray version, it actually includes the recently found original ending that more closely matches the 50s version