List of fictional plants  

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Fictional plants are plants that have been invented, and do not exist in real life. Fictional plants appear in films, literature, television, or other media.

Contents

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Plants from fiction

  • Adele: a giant carnivorous plant from the comedy film Adele Hasn't Had Her Dinner Yet (1977) by Oldřich Lipský
  • Aechmea asenionii: a giant bromeliad discovered in the jungles of Brazil, from the SF short story The Asenion Solution by Robert Silverberg. It has dark green leaves, an immense central black flower and emanates a strong odor of rotting flesh. (Note: Aechmea is a real genus of bromeliads).
  • Akarso: a plant characterized by almost oblong leaves. Its green and white stripes indicate the constant multiple condition of parallel active and dormant chlorophyll regions, from the Dune universe.
  • Alraune: a large flowering plant with a naked human female in the center of the bloom in the Castlevania series. It throws thorned roses and attacks with its roots.
  • Arctus Mandibus: a herbal curing plant from Dinotopia TV series
  • Audrey Jr.: carnivorous plant from the 1960 black comedy film The Little Shop of Horrors. Renamed Audrey II for the 1982 musical and a 1986 musical film, Little Shop of Horrors.
  • Aum plant: a plant commonly used for its healing abilities on open wounds from the Sword of Truth fantasy series by Terry Goodkind
  • Axis: a gigantic coiling tree which stretches high above the clouds in the computer generated movie Kaena: The Prophecy
  • Bat-thorn: a plant, similar to wolfsbane, offering protection against vampires in Mark of the Vampire.
  • Biollante: a monster plant of titanic proportions in the movie Godzilla vs Biollante
  • Black Mercy: a telepathic and parasitic flower that reads a victim's thoughts, and feeds their mind a convincing simulation of their greatest desire. Cut off from outside sensation, the victim dies, with the Black Mercy presumably feeding on the victim's body during this process. As seen in the Justice League Unlimited episode "The Man Who Has Everything".
  • Blister plants: oxygen supplying plants in the 'cave of death' on planet Lumen in Space Patrol TV series
  • Blood Grass: a plant from the game Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, native to the Planes of Oblivion and best known for its alchemical capability of granting 'invisibility' (i.e. 'Chameleon'.)
  • Blood Orchid: a rare flower found only in the jungles of Borneo that only blooms every seven years in the movie Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. The plant supposedly grants longer life by allowing cells to reproduce far longer.
  • Bloodflower: a venom spitting flower from the video game Metroid Prime
  • Bob (or Herbert): A tree growing on the head of the Super Mutant named Harold in the Fallout series of games. At the time of the events of Fallout 3, Bob had grown into a standard tree with Harold embedded in his bark. It is heavily insinuated by Harold that Bob is sentient.
  • Broxlorthian Squidflower: Carnivorous plant from The Time Wastelands of Tildor series that grasps and devours ravenous scavenger birds with its sharp tentacles.
  • Cactacae: sentient races of cactus people from China Miéville's Bas-Lag series
  • Candypop Bud: a flower found in the video games Pikmin and Pikmin 2
  • Carnifern: a fictional plant species that can evolve into sentience in the video game SimEarth
  • Chamalla: plant from Battlestar Galactica (2004) TV series. The extract of chamalla is used as alternative medicine for a range of treatments, including cancer. It is viewed with much disdain from the medical community, and appears to be an ineffective treatment for cancer. A side effect from using chamalla appears to be that the user suffers from hallucinations or prescient visions.
  • Chuck the Plant: a plant found in several of LucasArts' games
  • Cleopatra: the carnivorous plant kept as a pet in The Addams Family series
  • Crazee Dayzees: anthropomorphic pansy flowers that sing lullabies to try to put Mario to sleep. They appear in the Yoshi series and the Paper Mario series.
  • Cow plant (Laganaphyllis simnovorii): the plant in The Sims 2: University that natural scientists can plant; the cow plant eats Sims and produces a "milk" that increases the drinker's lifespan.
  • Deathbottle: a carnivorous plant which grows natural pitfall traps lined with spikes in the documentary film The Future Is Wild
  • Dyson tree: a hypothetical genetically-engineered plant, (perhaps resembling a tree) capable of growing on a comet, suggested by the physicist Freeman Dyson
  • Elowan: a race of plant-like creatures in Starflight computer game, Official Description
  • Eon Rose: a flower in the Warcraft Universe. Each of its five petals represent a colour of a dragon: Gold, Black, Sapphire, Emerald, Ruby.
  • Flaahgra: a boss character from Metroid Prime video game series which has an accelerated growth rate and wields massive scythes. Flaghraa can cause plant growth and spit acid.
  • Flossberry: a berry that looks like a small tangle of twirly green floss, and has a leaf. If the fruit is ripe, it turns teeth emerald green when used as floss. From the animated television series "Chowder"" on Cartoon Network.
  • Flower of Life: a flower featured in some anime series: The Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross, Robotech or Nurse Angel Ririka SOS
  • Genesis Trees: trees located in the world of Legaia from the video game Legend of Legaia. They have the power to keep a large area free of the Mist.
  • Gingold: a rare tropical fruit from Yucatán in DC Comics. The gingold extract makes the user of it stretchier, and a Gingold soda pop was popular among Indian rubber men at circus sideshows. Ralph Dibny drank a concentrated elixir made from it to become the superhero called the Elongated Man.
  • Giraluna: a plant with paramimetic qualities, evident in its metallic seeds, or spherostills, on its corona, in Parallel Botany by Leo Lionni
  • G'Quan Eth: plant indigenous to the Narn homeworld, used as incense in religious ceremonies from Babylon 5 TV series. It is ritually burned as incense, and its seeds are a narcotic for Centauri when dropped in alcohol. The G'Quan Eth plant is "difficult to grow, expensive to transport, very expensive to own"[1]. Whether it affects other species in this way when in alcohol is not clear, but we know that Narn don't seem to use it as a recreational drug (Londo chides G'Kar for Narns "It's a shame you Narns waste them, burning them as incense"[2]) and that it is illegal to possess on B5 except in religious contexts. The plant is presumably named after Narn spiritual leader G'Quan.
  • Grass Pokémon: any of the various plant like Pokémon such as Bulbasaur from the Pokémon video game series
  • Carter Green, the Vegetable Man: a character from The Hungry Tiger of Oz and subsequent Oz books
  • Grippers: carnivorous plants from the Deltora Quest book series by Emily Rodda. They resemble toothed mouths growing in the ground, and are covered with cabbage like leaves which open up to let prey fall in when stepped on.
  • Happy plant: a weed which causes euphoric effects when ingested, from the Dinosaurs TV series
  • Hybernia tree: a tree grown on Paradise Island from Wonder Woman TV series. The tree is the source of a drug that induced forgetfulness.
  • Inkvine: a creeping plant frequently used to whip in the slave cribs in the Dune universe
  • Integral Trees: enormous trees from the science-fiction novel The Integral Trees by Larry Niven. They are 100 kilometers long and have a leafy "tuft" at each end oriented in opposite directions forming an ∫, the integral symbol.
  • Jurai Royal Trees: intelligent trees that can form and be used as the central computers for Spaceships used by the Jurai in the anime Tenchi Muyo!
  • Katterpod: a plant grown on the planet Bajor for its edible root (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine series)
  • Killerwillows, trappersnappers, wiltmilts, berrywishes, pluggyrugs, snaptrap trees and others: from the novel Hothouse by Brian Aldiss
  • Kite-Eating Tree: a tree featured in the comic strip Peanuts
  • Krynoid: extraterrestrial carnivorous plant in episode "The Seeds of Doom" from Doctor Who TV series
  • Kyrt: a plant harvested only on the planet Florina in Isaac Asimov's The Currents of Space. It is grown for its fibers finer than the most delicate synthetics and stronger than any steel alloy.
  • Lashers: a giant variety of carnivorous plants, able to move around, and often aggressive from the MMORPG World of Warcraft
  • Lovelies: a flower that is smiling happily, and try to grab Kirby and drain his health from the Kirby series.
  • Lufwood: ash-grey and very tall tree, with a straight trunk devoid of many branches up until the canopy, from The Edge Chronicles series of books by Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell
see List of plants of the Edge Chronicles for other species of plants
  • Mangaboos: a race of vegetable people from Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz
  • Mariphasa lupina lumina (Wolf Flower): an extremely rare phosphorescent plant found only in the mountains of Tibet from the movie Werewolf of London
  • Metarax: a race of humanoid plants from the Japanese anime Sonic X
  • Moon Disc: an ovoid, translucent plant which has partial telepathy, and can move on its own from Blake's 7 TV series. It grows only on the planet Zondar and is the source of Shadow, a highly addictive drug whose inevitable result is death.
  • Mors ontologica: a little blue flower which is the source of the drug Substance D in Philip K. Dick's novel A Scanner Darkly
  • Night-blooming Mock Orchid: a 'homely' plant bearing a single flower that opens only once every forty years, under the light of the moon, blooms for a few seconds, then wilts. Grown by Mr. Wilson in the 1993 movie Dennis the Menace.
  • Pao Pao Fruit: a star shaped fruit said to intertwine the fates of those who share it. it is from the Destiny Islands in Kingdom Hearts video games series.
  • Papadalupapadipu: a plant whose pod cures the common cold immediately for men, in the sitcom Perfect Strangers. However, when women eat the plant, they grow a mustache and in two weeks suffer a relapse. The plant is said to grow on Mount Mypos on the Mediterranean Isle of Mypos, the fictional country of Balki Bartokomous.
  • Peahat, Deku Scrubs, Deku Baba: races of plant-like creatures from The Legend of Zelda series of video games
  • Peruvian Puff Pepper: a type of pepper from Peru, known for its sweet flavor and spicy heat. It is only available in South America, and is illegal in the United States for causing kidney failure and/or chapped lips. Appears in the Drake & Josh episode of the same name, and it is also referenced to in an episode of iCarly.
  • Peya: a bush with edible roots from the novel Rocannon's World by Ursula K. Le Guin
  • Pikmin: small humanoid plant creatures that appear abundantly in Nintendos Pikmin series
  • Piranha Plants: plants with mouths from the Mario series of video games, often depicted as sentient
  • Plant Men of Barsoom: a race of humanoid plants from the Martian novels of Edgar Rice Burroughs
  • Principal Malaysian Palmgrass: from My Gym Partner's a Monkey animated series
  • Priphea Flowers: a beautiful flower from the Lufia series
  • Protoanthus: a plant similar to the first flowering plants which evolved in the Early Cretaceous period. It is a small shrub, similar in appearance to magnolia, with tiny white flowers. The name was made up for the Walking with Dinosaurs documentary series.
  • Pseudobushia Hugiflora: a big, talking plant from the video game The Legend of Kyrandia: Book One by Westwood Studios
  • Rangdo also known as Uncle: an Aspidistra in the BBC's 1980's The_Adventure_Game
  • Re-annual plants: plants which, due to a rare 4-dimensional twist in their genetic structure, flower and grow before their seed germinates (from Terry Pratchett's Discworld)
  • Red weed: a red plant from Mars brought to Earth possibly accidentally by the invading Martians in the novel The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
  • Rroamal: dangerous creeping parasite vine, from the novel Decision at Doona, by Anne McCaffrey
  • Rytt: vinelike carnivorous plant from the novel War Against the Rull by A. E. van Vogt
  • Sapient Pearwood: literally a sapient species of tree, found on the Counterweight Continent in the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett
  • SapSac: an explosive parasitic plant that ignites when attacked as a means of defense from Metroid Prime video game series
  • Senzu Bean: in Dragonball Z, Senzu Beans are grown by Korin in Korin Tower. When eaten, the consumer's energy and physical health are restored to their fullest; the effects are typically almost instantaneous for the recipient
  • Shimmerweed: a light reflecting dandelion like weed from the Advanced Dungeons and Dragons Dragonlance campaign setting
  • Snake vine: an odd-looking vine with dusky, variegated leaves hunkered around a stem that winds a stranglehold around nearby trees, eventually killing them from the Sword of Truth fantasy series by Terry Goodkind. It will bite at nearby creatures, leaving deadly toothlike thorns that burrow into their skin and eventually kill them. There is actually a plant commonly called by this name that is native to Australia. See Snake Vine
  • Solar Complexus Americanus: heat-generating plants imported from Venezuela. The Scandinavian botanist responsible for discovering these hot-air producers was none other than Professor Olaf Lipro (an anagram of April Fool). It was an April Fool's Day joke launched by Glasgow Herald in 1995.
  • Spitfire Tree: a tree from the tropical rainforests of Antarctica 100 million year from now in the documentary film The Future Is Wild. It has a stout trunk, frond-like leaves sprouting from single stalks and separate male and female flowers which cover the surface of the trunk.
  • Sser: a bush with red poisonous berries which smelled deceptively sweet, from the novel Decision at Doona, by Anne McCaffrey
  • Stage trees: trees from Larry Niven's Known Space setting, originally engineered by the Tnuctipun. Stage trees have a core of solid rocket fuel in their trunks that they ignite when mature to disperse their seeds. Particularly large stage trees are able to reach escape velocity and as a result have spread throughout the Milky Way galaxy in a form of panspermia.
  • Stinky: a plant from the children's TV series Sesame Street
  • Sukebind: plant with aphrodisiac properties, growing only on one farm in Sussex (UK) from Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons. The Sukebind and the Triffid are unique as being the only fictional plants to have an entry in the Oxford English Dictionary.
  • Supox utricularia: a race of kind, sentient plant creatures from Star Control computer game series
  • Tangle grass: writhing tendril like grass with minuscule barbs that capture small prey and impede larger animals. There is also a poisonous variety. From Metroid Prime video game series.
  • Tanna leaves: a mystical herb which has the property of attracting and controlling mummies in some mummy movies
  • Tava beans: edible beans which the Genii grow and trade with in Stargate Atlantis TV series (episode "Underground")
  • Tellurian: Energy-draining flowers created by Tellu of the Witches 5 from Sailor Moon
  • Tesla trees: large electrified trees from the planet Hyperion in Hyperion Cantos novels by Dan Simmons. They appear to store up electricity inside their body during certain seasons, releasing all of it in huge arcs of lightning from their crown, burning away all that was growing or walking near them and thus getting fertilizer.
  • Thunder Spud: Potato that explodes on impact.
  • Tirils: fictional plants from Parallel Botany by Leo Lionni. One species, Tirillus silvador, has the extraordinary ability to produce shrill, whistling sounds audible to two or three hundred meters.
  • Trama root: a thick claw-like root, an ingredient for making a levitation potion from The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind video game
  • Traversers: giant vegetal spider analogues which spin their webs between Earth and Moon in the novel Hothouse by Brian Aldiss
  • Treant: race of humanoid trees from Dungeons & Dragons and other similar games
  • Tree-of-Life: the ancestor of yams, with similar appearance and taste, from Larry Niven's Known Space novels
  • Treeships: living trees that are propelled through space by ergs - "force field creatures" in Hyperion Cantos novels by Dan Simmons. The containment fields generated by the ergs around the tree keep its atmosphere intact.
  • Triffids: carnivorous plants which are able to move and possess a whip-like poisonous sting, from the novel The Day of the Triffids (1951) by John Wyndham. They subsequently appeared in a radio series (BBC, 1960), a motion picture (1962), a TV series (BBC, 1981) and a sequel novel, The Night of the Triffids (2001) by Simon Clark.
  • Truffula tree: from the children's story The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
  • Tumtum tree: appears in the nonsense poem Jabberwocky found in Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll
  • Une: a small, weed like plant in the Castlevania series which generally only serves to slow the player momentarily.
  • Vines: crawling, carnivorous vines with acidic sap that release infectious spores and have the ability to mimic sounds and speech found in an isolated hill in the Mexican jungle from The Ruins (novel) by Scott Smith. The unnamed vines also appear in the film of the same name.
  • Vul nut vine: a re-annual plant which can begin to flower as much as eight years before being sown in Terry Pratchett's Discworld. The wine obtain from vul nut vine can give the drinker an insight into the future.
  • Wakeflower: a plant from Tamora Pierce's The Immortals quartet whose bog-growing flowers attract flies and are used as smelling salts
  • Whistling leaves: a plant easy to find as the large leaves have big holes that make a whistling noise (hence the plant's name) when the wind blows through them. The leaves contain a powerful diuretic. From the comic book Elfquest.
  • White Claudia: a plant that grows in lake or river banks from Silent Hill video game series. It has long, circular leaves and white flowers. The seeds are used to obtain a highly-addictive hallucinogenic drug.
  • Wildvine: a plant alien from Ben 10 animated TV series
  • Witchblood: a plant that grows only where a witch has been violently murdered. From Anne Bishop's Black Jewels Trilogy.
  • Wroshyr trees: kilometers-tall trees native to the planet Kashyyyk from Star Wars universe
  • Yangala-Cola: a mushroom native to Amazonian Jungle from Syberia video game. When ground up and ingested it enhances eyesight acuteness.
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Plants from J. R. R. Tolkien's Middle-earth

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Plants from J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter series

  • Abyssinian shrivelfig: When peeled, shrivelfigs are used as an ingredient in Shrinking Solution.†
  • Alihotsy: ingestion of its leaves causes hysteria.†
  • Bouncing bulb: an animated bulb plant; appears in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
  • Bubotuber: thick, black, slug-like plants that grow vertically out of the soil. It is normal for them to squirm and they are covered in pus-filled swellings.
  • Devil's Snare: a vine plant that strangles people and wilts in the sunlight. Harry, Ron, and Hermione find themselves caught in it in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, and it strangles a man in St. Mungo's hospital in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Also, Professor Sprout lobs it over the wall during the Battle of Hogwarts.
  • Dittany: a plant which has the ability to cure wounds.
  • Dirigible Plum: a plum tree with floating fruits. Luna Lovegood mentions the plant and it is later seen outside her home in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.
  • Fanged Geranium: a geranium that bites humans.†
  • Flitterbloom: a plant that superficially resembles a Devil's Snare but is non-violent.†
  • Flutterby bush: a bush that quivers and shakes.†
  • Gillyweed: when eaten, this plant causes the user to grow gills and webbed feet and fingers, and thus become able to breathe and swim underwater for approximately an hour, depending on whether the user is in fresh or salt water.
  • Gurdyroot: resembles a green onion.†
  • Honking daffodil: mentioned in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Professor Sprout has some.
  • Leaping toadstool
  • Mandrakes: tubers that look like babies when young. Their screams can kill when fully grown. A potion made from mature mandrakes can restore victims that have been Petrified. A different kind of Mandrake is a real plant. Whilst the Mandrake as it appears in the books and films is fictional, Rowling's description does reflect genuinely held beliefs about the Mandrake, in particular, the danger surrounding its screams. This led to the practice of using dogs to collect the mandrake, and the blocking of ears during collecting.
  • Mimbulus mimbletonia: a cactus with boils instead of spines; sprays foul-smelling goo in a large radius when poked.
  • Puffapod: a large pink pod filled with seeds; bursts into flower when dropped.†
  • Screechsnap: a semi-sentient plant that wriggles and squeaks uncomfortably when given too much dragon dung manure.†
  • Snargaluff: a dangerous man-eating carnivorous plant, deceptively taking shape of a dead tree stump when in passive condition; shoots out thorny vines to catch their prey. From Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
  • Venomous Tentacula: a species of magical plant that possess a series of dark red spiny tentacles; appears in PC video games as a Venus Flytrap with a tentacled base, later rendered like a flower with teeth inside the petals. A wizard comedian is known to have survived eating this plant on a bet, though he is still purple.
  • Whomping Willow: a large, violent tree that thrashes its branches at those who approach it. Though it first appears in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, it features significantly in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

Note that dittany and mandrakes exist in reality, though are not credited with the powers they are supposed to have in the wizarding world.

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Plants from Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series

  • Arhada: a tall, long-lived, tree resembling an oak or chestnut, with brown trunks and oval leaves with a hint of gold
  • Corly: corly-root smoke is used as a treatment for fever
  • Fourfoil: a herb (not a four-leaf clover, since Ged cannot identify it...)
  • Hazia: the root of this plant is used as an addictive drug to give visions. It blackens the mouth and causes nervous disorders and eventually death.
  • Hemmen: large tree
  • Hurbah tree: low-growing tree that silkworms feed on
  • Kingsfoil: a herb
  • Lacefoam: white-flowered weed
  • Nilgu: giant brown seaweed with fronds 80 to 100 feet long, and whose fibres are used for cloth, rope and nets
  • Paramal: a herb
  • Pendick-tree: red-flowering tree
  • Perriot: a plant whose leaves are used to staunch bleeding
  • Rushwash: herb used to make rushwash tea
  • Sparkweed: yellow meadow flower
  • White hallows: white-flowering herb growing in river meadows and marshes, with healing properties
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Plants from Dungeons & Dragons

  • Assassin Vine: a plant that will attempt to strangle anyone who ventures under it.
  • Death's Head Tree: a tree that grows in human blood on a battle field and whose fruit resembles heads (those of the bodies the tree has eaten) that can spit seeds like bullets
  • LashWeed: a monster plant that grabs animals nearby and eats them
  • Shambling mound: an atrocious monster plant.
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Plants from Monty Python's Flying Circus

  • Angolan sauntering tree (Amazellus robin ray)
  • Gambian sidling bush
  • Puking Tree of Mozambique
  • The Turkish little rude plant: a remarkably smutty piece of flora used by the Turks
  • Walking tree of Dahomey (Quercus nicholas parsonus): the legendary walking tree that can achieve speeds of up to 50 miles an hour, especially when it is in a hurry. There is movie footage from the late 1940s in which a walking tree actually sprints after a cheetah. Very funny, although the cheetah was subsequently quite rooted.
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Plants from James Cameron's Avatar

A full listing of flora from the planet Pandora can be found in Pandorapedia: The Official Field Guide. Plants in Pandora have evolved according to the characteristics of their environment, which has an atmosphere that is thicker than on Earth, with higher concentrations of carbon dioxide, xenon and hydrogen sulfide. Gravity is weaker in Pandora, thereby giving rise to gigantism. There is a strong magnetic field, causing plants to develop 'magnetotropism'. A particularly intriguing quality of flora and fauna in Pandora is their ability to communicate with each other. This is explained in the movie as a phenomenon called 'signal transduction', pertaining to how plants perceive a signal and respond to it.

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Plants from mythology

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Hoaxes

  • Man-eating tree or Madagascar tree: a fictitious tree in the forests of Madagascar. There are stories of similar trees in the jungles of Mindanao Island in the Philippines. The tree is said to have a gray trunk and animated vine-like stems used to capture and kill humans and other large animals. Comparable plants are mentioned in tall tales and fiction.
  • Spaghetti tree: a tree from which spaghetti is harvested. It was an April Fool's Day joke launched by the BBC TV programme Panorama in 1957.
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See also




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