The past three posts have featured several examples of how plant life can be portrayed as frightful and threatening in weird fiction. Options can range from carnivorous trees with arms and tentacles to disturbing vegetation that mimics the human form. Because vegetation is not inherently terrifying, it must be given human or animal traits like mobility and aggression. Or else some element that is typical of green organisms must be amplified to inspire dread.
A
little of this creative manipulation of botanical detail goes a long way. A tree or a vegetable that is too mobile and
predacious, a “tobonga”, is too silly to be taken seriously. A more subtle approach, one that merely tweaks
what is known of plant life, that turns up the volume just a few notches on
some unusual trait, can be more effective.
H.G.
Wells is best known for science fiction novels like The Time Machine (1895), The
Island of Dr. Moreau (1896), and The
War of the Worlds, (1898). Readers
will recall that in Wells’ famous tale of earth’s struggle against Martian
attack, a vigorous and invasive species of “red creeper” is inadvertently
brought to earth by the Martians.
Symbolic of Martian imperialism, it soon clogged waterways and wreaked
ecological havoc. Fortunately, the alien
plant succumbed to earth’s microorganisms just as the Martian invaders did.
(I am
convinced that some of the more successful weeds in my lawn and garden are not
originally from earth.)
H.G.
Wells wrote at least one story of horticultural horror, The Flowering of the Strange Orchid (1905). In some respects it is a snapshot of the
orchid mania that was prevalent in the mid to late 19th century. Wealthy collectors and corporations funded
expeditions into the tropics to seek out unknown species of orchids and other
plants, and bring them back for cultivation and breeding purposes. Some of these expeditions involved quite
hazardous treks through jungle and mountain terrain.
Batten,
a minor character in the story, is one of these orchid collectors. He suffers a
ghastly death on an expedition in the Andaman Islands, suffering massive blood
loss believed to be caused by jungle leeches.
Later on, a timid orchid hobbyist back in England eagerly purchases
plants in a London market to add to his collection. He brings home several familiar orchids like
phalaenopsis, some vandas and a dendrobium—and also one that is unidentifiable. He has a hothouse near his home in which he
creates the ideal conditions for these tropical plants.
Winter-Wedderburn
is the orchid hobbyist, described as “a shy, lonely, rather ineffectual
man”, who shows off his new specimens to his housekeeper. She is suspicious of the unidentified purchase. Wells’ lays on the foreshadowing pretty
thickly here. The housekeeper remarks
that it has an ugly shape, "I don't like those things that stick
out," and "It looks…like a spider shamming dead." Not only that, but it happens to be one of the
items that Batten, the dead orchid collector, found on his last expedition.
Winter-Wedderburn laments that his
life is uneventful—he is after all unmarried and does not work. His principle ambition
is to discover of a new species of orchid and perhaps have it named after him. Winter-Wedderburnsonia or some such. "Nothing
ever does happen to me," he says, and yet horrors of all kinds seem to
swirl around people like this, leaving working stiffs alone for the most part.
He compares himself to his hero, the
dead explorer: Batten was married twice, divorced once, survived malaria, broke
his leg, killed a Malay, was shot with a poison dart, and finally was exsanguinated
by large tropical leeches. One day, Winter-Wedderburn
has a premonition that something eventful will happen in his quiet life.
Meanwhile, in the hothouse, his
other purchases perish—not uncommon when trying to raise orchids—but the
unidentified specimen thrives. The housekeeper
is increasingly disturbed by the plant’s appearance. Finally, Winter-Wedderburn returns to the
hothouse to find his prize plant in bloom.
The flowers are gorgeous, but the
fragrance is overpowering and he blacks out, falling on the floor beneath the
orchid. His housekeeper finds him some
time later, half dead from loss of blood, covered with the aerial roots of the
hematophagous orchid. She breaks all the
windows in the hothouse, sharply dropping the temperature, and rescues him from
the clutches of the plant. She also
destroys his entire collection of orchids in the process.
I was
also once an avid collector of orchids, and this story by H.G. Wells was
familiar to many of the members of our local orchid society. (The destruction of the green house at the
end was the most terrifying part of the story for them.) Wells has taken some features of the life
cycle of a typical orchid and exaggerated them for entertainment. Orchids are fascinating plants, but are a
much greater hazard to your wallet than your circulatory system. The
Flowering of the Strange Orchid was probably intended more as satire than
horror, but illustrates one approach to making plant life a source of fear in
weird fiction.
Fall
is just a week away—already! Here in
Michigan, the temperature dropped to 37° Fahrenheit last night. Our flowers and vegetables are finishing the
season, and trees are just beginning to turn color. All that remains outside is the annual clean
up of the yard. Seed and garden
catalogs will soon be arriving for next year’s sales. But I may try something new this spring—a meteorite
just landed not far from here…
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