Plant Aliens: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:pikmin-
{{quote|''"An intellectual carrot... the mind boggles."''
|''[[The Thing from Another World]]''}}
Aliens aren't just made of meat. Whether dumb, talkative or even singing, plant-based aliens have been a staple of movies, films and TV for decades. There are even a few based on fungi, which are just as [[wikipedia:Sessile|sessile]], despite being very different from plants. They're actually much more closely related to animals, but if you've got walking talking mushrooms, why worry about a little thing like that?
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{{examples}}
== Anime and Manga ==
* ''[[Galaxy Angel (
* The alien Tart's power in ''[[Tokyo Mew Mew]]'' is creating mutated vines; in the anime, this was altered to changing Earth plants.
* In ''[[Outlaw Star]]'' there is a sentient cactus that can control people's actions by vibrating its quills. A nod to "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S18
* Plant-based [[Digimon]] tend to be female. No explanation why is given, though- probably either some "mother nature" thing, or related to the fact that most plant digimon have a flower motif at some point. Grass-type [[Pokémon]], however, are gender dimorphic.
** Most plants (though [[wikipedia:Plant sexuality#Individual plant sexuality|by no means all]]) are [[Hermaphrodite
* In an episode of ''[[Transformers Headmasters]]'', Scorponok used Daniel to sneak seeds of giant [[Man-Eating Plant|man eating plants]] to San Francisco and the Autobots' Athenia base. Said plants later uprooted themselves and walked around, making them true plant aliens.
* ''[[To
** Momo has an entire collection of these she can summon through her phone at anytime.
* Cosmo from ''[[Sonic X]]'' and by extension her species including the {{spoiler|Metarex}}
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* They're never directly identified as plants, but the green-skinned Namekians of ''[[Dragonball Z]]'' don't eat any kind of food and drink only water, because they get everything else they need for nourishment from photosynthesis.
== Comic Books ==
* The most powerful, terrifying alien in the galaxy of ''[[
▲* The most powerful, terrifying alien in the galaxy of ''[[Buck Godot Zap Gun for Hire|Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire]]'' (so much so that he has a private teleportation system for getting around and a pocket-sized black hole trash can) is Lord Thezmothete. Thezmothete's right-hand-entity is He-Who-Must-Be-Watered, who looks like a large arrangement of exotic flowers in a hovering bowl.
* The Cotati are intelligent, telepathic alien trees in [[Marvel Comics]].
* [[Guardians of the Galaxy|Groot]], with a healthy serving of [[When Trees Attack]] mixed in.
* A particularly creepy ''[[Swamp Thing]]'' example. The title character is a disembodied consciousness, who forms his body from the plantlife surrounding him. This works well on Earth, where the flora is just flora, and can be twisted and reshaped with impunity. When he lands on an alien planet and is surrounded by sentient plants, it's outright [[Body Horror]] the way they're twisted and crammed together to form the body of a giant space alien. (For reference, imagine ''human beings'' being used for the same purpose...)
** For the record, said planet was the homeworld of the plantlike [[Silver Age]] [[Green Lantern]] named Medphyll (who arrives to reason with Swampy).
== Films -- Live-Action ==
* ''[[Little Shop of Horrors]]'', both the film and spin-off cartoon, featured a talking, [[Man-Eating Plant|man-eating]], mean green mother from outer space called Audrey II.
* The title creature from the 1951 film ''[[The Thing
** The ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode mentioned below, "The Seeds of Doom", was heavily inspired by this film.
* Lest we forget, the ''[[Attack of the Killer Tomatoes]]'' films and cartoon series.
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* The truly terrible scifi/comedy ''Invasion of the Star Creatures'' had a couple of carrot monsters under the control of the eponymous [[Green-Skinned Space Babe|star creatures]].
* Non-sentient example: the fast-spreading plant organisms from ''[[Creepshow]]''.
== Jokes ==
* The one about the mushroom that walked into a bar, was refused service, and pointed out he was a really [[Incredibly Lame Pun|fun-guy]].
== Literature ==
* Old-school science fiction fans will remember the red alien weed laid down by the Martians in [[
* Alien plants also featured in the 1950s novel ''[[The Day of the Triffids]]'' and its subsequent TV and movie adaptations. However, these aliens were in the habit of walking around and killing people with their deadly stingers. Ordinarily a rake and a good dose of weed killer would be enough to dispatch them, but mankind had been blinded by a meteor shower... Strictly the triffids are not aliens in the original novel, they were the product of Soviet plant breeding experiments. The 'Meteor Shower' may or may not have been a man-made weapon. However, in the best-known movie adaptation, they were changed to aliens.
* ''Invasion of the Body Snatchers''.
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** In fact, every native species (only a few dozen species exist) on that planet had an animal/plant duality to it's life cycle. It's an important plot point when the humans figure out WHY and actually explains the single-biome nature of the planet (it's all just fields and forests).
** The cause of all this is {{spoiler|the Descolada, a highly-adaptable virus capable of infecting any living thing. It unravels any DNA strang it comes into contact with, causing the death of any organism that has not adapted to it. Humans can only survive it by ingesting genetically-engineered food supplements daily, and all who contract it are carriers. When the Descolada has first appeared on Lusitania, it wiped out the vast majority of plant and animal species, leaving behind those that managed to adapt and use the Descolada as part of their lifecycle. Essentially, this means that various animals are, at different stages in their lives, plants and vice versa. The "piggies", local primitive sentients, turn into trees when properly killed (it's a great honor) and retain some of their consciousness as plants, whose sap is used to fertilize female "piggies" (which look like tiny snakes). When the [[The Federation|Starways Congress]] finds out about the Descolada, they send a fleet to destroy Lusitania. Luckily, thanks to the lack of FTL travel, the fleet won't arrive for decades}}.
* [[
** To be fair, real-life fungi are not only closer to animals than plants genetically, but they also have chitin (the same stuff that arthropod shells are made of) reinforcing their cell walls, unlike the cellulose of plants.
*** Then again, the Mi-go would still be even less related to Earth animals than plants since while their cellular structure behaves in a manner similar to a fungus it's made entirely from exotic matter with properties that seem to defy the laws of physics (can't be photographed with normal cameras for one thing) owing to the fact that they originally came from a parallel universe.
** A better Lovecraft example is the Elder Things in ''At The Mountains of Madness'' which are the original [[Starfish Aliens]] and have tissues more like plants than animals.
* Even ''[[Star Wars]]'' has this in the short story "Day of the Sepulchral Night". Sentient, humanoid, plant species called Zelosians.
** Zelosians are basically Ridiculously Human Plant Aliens. They bleed green, have very vivid green eyes, and can live for a month on water and sunlight, but otherwise are basically human, down to digestive tracts and reproduction. Lampshaded by one of them in ''[[Death Star]]'', when he wonders if any geneticists have been able to make sense of his kind.
** There are [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Botanical_sentient_species several others], among whom the Neti (Force-sensitive sentient shapeshifting trees, alternating between a sapling stage, fully mobile periods of a few centuries (in which the females [[Non-Mammal Mammaries|have breasts for some reason]]), and a up to millennium of hibernation in the form a big, rooted tree, which can extend to indefinite given the right conditions) and the Baffor Trees (regular, non-sentient trees on their own, but able to link their roots together to create a collective consciousness)
** A one-off joke in Darksaber mentions a carnivorous alien vending a vegetable stand next to a plant-like alien selling hunks of meat.
* The Demisiv in ''[[Young Wizards]]'' look like walking Christmas trees with berry-like eyes.
* ''[[Bruce Coville
** His last name is [[Incredibly Lame Pun|O'Dendron]]. When the main character expresses astonishment that a plant could talk, he responds, "You're made of meat. It's a wonder you can think at all." Which is also a [[Shout-Out]] to [https://web.archive.org/web/20100209131234/http://baetzler.de/humor/meat_beings.html this] story.
** For the record, his full name is actually Phillogenous esk Piemondum in the original editions of the books. (And most likely in the reprints as well.)
* ''The Venom of Argus'' by Edmund Cooper (writing as Richard Avery). An alien tree similar to the tangle tree in the ''[[
* The AACP of ''[[Sector General]]''. It is even mentioned that the creator of the classification scheme failed to take the possibility of intelligent plants, and is in fact used in every book as the prime example of how the system is imperfect.
* The Kanten in David Brin's [[Uplift]] series. They were [[Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke|genetically engineered]] to be sentient over a period of roughly a hundred thousand years, so it may be justifiable. They are small trees but can walk and talk, and are no "closer to nature" than animal-like aliens. They are one of the few species allied to Earthclan. Mulc-"spiders" are a species of sapient, but sessile, plant-like things quite unlike any life on Earth, which exist to dissolve cities after planets are declared fallow and evacuated.
* In ''[[
* ''[[Perdido Street Station]]'' and its sequels have humanoid cacti, the Cactacae, many of whom live in a huge greenhouse. Their thick cell walls render them immune to most weapons.
* There is a [[Tear Jerker]] story by Edmond Hamilton about a man who has seeds from another planet land in his backyard and grow into a green humanoid couple. The problem is, {{spoiler|the human and the girl fall in love with each other, and the alien guy kills the girl the moment he can actually move towards her (they initially have roots)}}. The human goes to live in a desert - can't stand green anymore.
* In [[Alan Dean Foster]]'s ''Cat-A-Lyst'', the protagonists meet up with a starfaring band of treelike aliens who possess genius-level intelligence but are somewhat lacking in the common-sense department.
* The Czillians from [[Jack Chalker]]'s [[Well World]] series are bipedal sentient plants. They are a lot more plant-like and a lot less humanoid then many of the other examples.
* ''Lukan War'' (1969) had plant aliens from another galaxy come into conflict with the united Milky Way. They were also, for some [[Hand Wave]] reason, [[Invisibility|invisible]]
* The Citoac in the [[Star Trek Novel Verse]] (see [[Starfleet Corps of Engineers]]). The Mabrae, another [[Star Trek Novel Verse]] culture (appearing in ''[[Star Trek:
** In [[Diane Duane]]'s ''[[Star Trek]]'' novel "Doctor's Orders", the Lahit are basically walking fir trees. Upon seeing a group of them, McCoy snarks that [[Macbeth|Birnham Wood finally gets to come to Dunsinane]].
* [[Piers Anthony]]'s ''Omnivore'' is set on a world where fungal life forms take the place of animal life. One species of mobile fungus, nicknamed "mantas" for their shape, combines this trope with [[Starfish Alien]].
* The skrode-riders in [[Vernor Vinge]]'s ''[[
* The stingbulbs from the ''[[
== Live-Action TV ==
* The classic ''[[Doctor Who]]'' story "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S13
** ''[[Doctor Who]]'' has also had [[Doctor Who/Recap/S18
** The seaweed creature from "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S5
** The wolf weeds from "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S17
** "[[Doctor Who/Recap/S3
*** And they are native to Skaro, which suggests that they might be another of Davros' projects.
** Vervoids.
*** Nah, we're all [[Fetish Fuel|hot]] for [[Doctor Who
* ''[[The Avengers (TV series)|The Avengers]]'' episode "The Man-Eater of Surrey Green" featured a giant plant that was using psychic powers to control a team of scientists to help it spread its seeds across the world. It then ate them all, as was its wont. The episode also featured a baffling off-hand reference to forests on the moon!
* Zhaan from ''[[
** Becomes a plot point in one episode when she starts "budding" and growing more aggressive because her body needs to feed on some animal protein once in a while.
** Those "photogasms" from intense multi-source sunlight look FUN.
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* In ''[[Quark]],'' Ficus is a Human Alien in appearance, but because he is actually a Plant Alien, his psychology is that of an emotionless Spock, only more so. His Mirror Universe double is exactly like him because "There are no good or bad plants, only plants."
* ''[[Lost in Space]]'' featured a somewhat-infamous episode entitled "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" with an alien carrot as a villain; some of the cast couldn't stop laughing on-camera at how ridiculous it was.
* ''[[
** [[Refuge in Audacity|But the space broccoli was a metaphor for AIDS!]]
* The title character in episode 2 of ''[[Ultra Seven]]'', "The Green Terror", is this.
* A number of monsters from [[Power Rangers]] are humanoid plants, such as the Bloom of Doom from ''[[Mighty Morphin Power Rangers]]''.
== Tabletop Games ==
* The Orks of ''[[Warhammer
** There are also a few more conventional examples, such as the Brainleaf and Spiker, both of which reproduce by converting anything that crosses their path into another of their kind.
* The Migo (actually named ''[[Spell My Name
* The [
* ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'' from the very early era got tree-people Treants (Tolkien's [[When Trees Attack|Ents]] with serial numbers scratched off) and fungus-people Myconids.
* In ''[[Dungeons and Dragons]]'' 4th edition, a race of sentient plant people are going to be introduced in the 3rd handbook called "Wilden". They can alter their bodies during sleep to gain different abilities and the appearance of their foliage changes as they age from spring to summer to autumn to winter.▼
** [[Forgotten Realms]] has Dark Trees in the Shining South region, created as guardian monsters by a wizard from Halruaa — he [[Hoist by His Own Petard|met the usual fate]] of those who create aggressive monsters without being prepared to handle them safely, then these mobile, part-[[Man-Eating Plant|carnivorous]], sneaky, evil trees have spread.
** [[Planescape]] has [[Planimal]] variety — talking, evil Viper Trees living on Lower Planes (powerful fiends even plant them as guards), which quite literally are trees that consist of [[Man-Eating Plant|carnivorous]], venomous snakes, but made of sort-of-wood which burns; the mature trees are sessile, but they sprout/hatch as tree-headed snakes that crawl away and later root themselves.
* ''[[Gamma World (Tabletop Game)|Gamma World]]'' has the Plant [[Player Character|character]] origin, as well as a number of plant-based monsters.▼
** [[Spelljammer]] has the Aartuk - wiry vine-shrubs (like the Pheet from ''[[Wizardry]]'', but sapient, malevolent and spacefaring), with elders using low-level priestly magic.
▲**
▲* ''[[
** One [[NPC]] is Columbia, a sentient vine forest occupying the entire Columbia Building.
== Toys ==
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** There's also its prototype the Kharzhani (not to be confused with the ancient [[Evil Overlord]] it was named after).
== Video Games ==
* The Elowan from the ''[[Starflight]]'' games.
* The Supox in ''[[Star Control]] II''. When the protagonist protests that human scientists (and science-fiction authors) have proven that intelligent plant life is a scientific impossibility, the Supox spokesman replies, "Yes. This has been confirmed by our people as well. Strange, is it not? Many of our people regard this inconsistency as proof of our divine origin." Luckily, they aren't [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|jerks about it]].
** From the same game come the Mycon, a race of fungoid aliens created by the [[Precursors]] as biological terraforming devices. However, over the millennia they have gone rogue, developed a religion centered around the worship of "Juffo-Wup" and basically do the opposite of their original mission (they transform verdant worlds into ones they have been adapted to live in, i.e. barren hellscapes).
*** Note: this info isn't explicitly stated within ''SC2'', but has been stated by [[Word of God|the original creators]], Fred and Paul, in an IRC chat.
* Not actually an alien, (well, [[Half-Human Hybrid|usually]],)but in the ''Sims 2'' expansion pack Seasons, your sims can be turned into "PlantSims" by using too much insecticide.
* [[Pikmin]]: Part
** Also, the walking, delicious fungus Puffstool with mutagenic spores.
* The Eaggra from the 1996 RTS ''[[War Wind]]'' are a numerous plant species that was used for slave labour by the reptilian Tha Roon before [[Turned Against Their Masters|the inevitable uprising]].
* The Thorian from [[Mass Effect]] is one huge plant-like... thing that can [[The Virus|control sapient creatures through spores]].
* The Xenofungus from ''[[Sid
* ''Master Of Orion 3'' had the Audrieh and Phaigour as minor non-playable races. Their exact natures were never really clarified beyond being categorized as "Plant" and "Fungal" respectively.
* Two of the many diverse aliens found in ''[[Meteos]]'' can be classified here: the sentient clairvoyant flowers of the planet Florias and the symbiotic living trees of Wuud/Arborea.
* The [[Little Green Men|Martians]] from ''[[UFO: After Blank|UFO: Afterlight]]'' are actually plant-like humanoid aliens. You kill them with [[Rule of Cool|Chainsaw Launchers]] and [[Katanas Are Just Better|Katanas]].
* Since ''Ocarina of Time'', ''[[The Legend of Zelda]]'' series has included Deku Babas in all of its 3D games. They resemble enormous venus flytraps, and the way to kill them is to sever the stalk. ''Wind Waker'' introduced a distant relative called ''Boku'' Babas, and one boss that was a 50-foot Boko Baba. Later, ''Twilight Princess'' gave us a 50-foot ''two-headed'' {{spoiler|Actually three headed}} Deku Baba.
** In addition, the series gives us Deku Scrubs. They have a society (and king) in ''Majora's Mask'', and are sometimes shown to be good business<s>men</s>shrubs.
** There's also the Koroks in ''The Wind Waker'', which are apparently another form of the Kokiri from ''Ocarina of Time'', meaning the Kokiri must be plants too, even though they look exactly like Hylian children. It would explain where they come from if they can't grow up anyway.
* It's never really been said whether they're really fungus-based or not, but I don't think it would be a stretch to consider the [[Super Mario Bros.|Toads]] one of these.
* The wildlife on Mars in ''Worlds of Ultima 2: Martian Dreams'' is often moving plants (die, roaming cacti, die!). This includes the sentient inhabitants.
* Mobile plant- and fungus-based creatures exist in the [[
** Also the Sporelings, a group of fungus-based humanoids in [[World of Warcraft]] that are friendly to players and sell some unique items and recipes (including a pet sporebat) for those who build reputation with them.
* [[Color Coded for Your Convenience|Five different species]] of aggressive lunar plants pose obstacles to your explorations in ''Voyage: Inspired By Jules Verne''. Their fruit is crucial to completion of the game.
* [[Spore]] has several plant parts that can be used for creating creatures.
* The second area of ''[[Sanitarium (
* The antagonists of ''[[Science Girls]]'', complete with "They're ''not'' plants, that's not how plants work!" lecture from Biology Girl.
* The Whittles from ''[[
* The peaceful merchants called Muscipulans from [[
* In ''[[Aleste]]'' and ''Aleste 2'', heroine Ellinor is battling a horde of super-intelligent plants trying to take over the world.
* In [[
** Terran flora is green because green wavelength of the sun carries least energy for photosynthesis. Presumably protoss homeworld's star could have completely different wavelength composition. Besides, weren't protoss essentially created by [[Abusive Precursors]]?
* Quercus from ''[[Irregular Webcomic]]'' is a tree being from the planet [[Stealth Pun|Fagalia]]. He ''really'' dislikes florists.
{{quote|
* The Spriggs from ''[[Beyond the Canopy]]'' are closer to elves than aliens, but they otherwise fit. They have leaves or flowers growing from their heads, they call their young "sprouts", and they're implied to have sap instead of blood.
* ''[[Buck Godot: Zap Gun for Hire]]'' has Lord Thezmothete and his plant-folk. On the local power ladder, Humanity is level 12. The Teleporter (the single not-from-this-universe critter who can juggle planets around) is level 8. "His Lordship" is level 1.
* ''[[Bob the Angry Flower]]''. If he counts as an alien.
== Web Original ==
▲== Web Originals ==
* The Flowers that lead the ''[[Protectors of the Plot Continuum]]'' are this, with the twist that they were originally plants from ''Earth'' that ended up on another planet due to a literal [[Plot Hole]].
* The speculative biology project ''Snaiad'' has animal and plant like alien lifeforms. Thing is, unlike in our world the distinction between "plants" and "animals" isn't as clear because some "plant" and "animal" groups (most notably the vertebrate analogues) evolved from things with animal and plant characteristics. [[Word of God]] states that the "vertebrates" still have a lethal relic of this: ''vegetative cancer''
* ''[[
== Western Animation ==
* Wildvine from ''[[
** Swampfire from ''[[Ben 10: Alien Force
** [[Scary Dogmatic Aliens|The Highbreed]] are also plant-like.
* Botanica from ''[[
* ''[[
* ''[[Star Trek:
* An episode of the ''[[Powerpuff Girls]]'' featured an invasion by broccoli-shaped aliens. With their parents captured, the children of Townsville resorted to eating the intruders, at the PPGs behest. (Obviously, the [[Aesop]] to be learned here was to eat your vegetables... but hypnosis by eating vegetables was [[Broken Aesop|what brought up this situation in the first place]].)
** There was also a game where they had to defeat alien pickles. Relish Rampage, I believe it was called.
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* For some reason, ''[[Courage the Cowardly Dog]]'' seems to run into a lot of hostile, talking fruits and vegetables. Not all of them are space aliens, but some are.
* While not "aliens" per se, the [[Our Elves Are Better|Wuts]] from ''[[The Dreamstone]]'' are increasingly revealed to be plantlike in more than just their green and vaguely leafy-looking appearance. In one episode, we see a yellowish and aged-looking Wut step into a pool of water...and in the time it takes to pan to the water and back to his face, he becomes recognizable again as one of the main characters.
* ''Sushi Pack'', "From the Planet Citrus" sees the pack getting jailed for trying to offer flowers, chocolate (made from cocoa seeds), and a painting of applesauce to some orange (shape, not just color) aliens [[Exactly What It Says
* ''[[My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic
{{reflist}}
{{Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism}}
[[Category:Bizarre Alien Biology]]
[[Category:Plant Tropes]]
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[[Category:Fantastic Sapient Species Tropes]]
[[Category:Index of Fictional Creatures]]
▲[[Category:Plant Aliens]]
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