Plant monsters were a natural for Weird Tales. The Pulp featured all types too, from the romantic in “The Woman of the Wood” by A. Merritt to the creepy with “The Seed in the Sepulchre” by Clark Ashton Smith to the science fictional with Edmond Hamilton‘s “The Plant Revolt” to the Space Opera of Henry Kuttner’s “Raider of the Spaceways”. No matter the context, things can always be weirder with moving or evil plants.
Edwin Baird, the first editor of Weird Tales, did not wait long to find a botanical bad-guy, publishing “The Devil Plant” by Lyle Wilson Holden (Weird Tales, May 1923). That’s only the third issue of the magazine. “Mandrake” by Adam Hull Shirk followed in July-August 1923. “The Sunken Land” by George W. Bayly (Weird Tales, May-June-July 1924) was Baird’s swan song, appearing in his final issue. It is an exciting adventure tale with killer trees. In the same issue was “The Sixth Tree” by Edith Lichty Stewart. A curse on a valley says that six men must hang from the trees before the evil will pass. A man of science laughs at such rot.
Farnsworth Wright, Baird’s replacement, waited only another year before he struck with”The Lure of Atlantis” by Joel Martin Nichols Jr. (Weird Tales, April 1925). A submarine discovers Atlantis in the Sargasso Sea where killer sea weed lives. The often reprinted “The Plant-Thing” by R. G. Macready (Weird Tales, July 1925) is a mad scientist yarn that describes how it feels to be eaten by a plant.
“The Man-Trap” by Hamilton Craigie (Weird Tales, November 1925) repeats the scientist with the giant Venus Fly-Trap and the usual results. Things improve after 1925.
“The Music of Madness” by William E. Barrett (Weird Tales, March 1926) has Atlantean sorcerers doing evil among the whispering trees.
“Sir Urag of the Trail” by Oscar Cook (Weird Tales, July 1926) is a tale by the husband of Christine Campbell Thomson, the editor of the Not at Night series that used many stories from Weird Tales. The jungle is a dangerous place.
“The Woman in the Woods” by A. Merritt (Weird Tales, August 1926) has a man fall in love with the spirit of the forest. This puts him at odds with the loggers who want to harvest the trees. Farnsworth Wright knew they had something special here and used three illustrations for the story when the rule was usually only one. (It was Merritt after all.)
“The Star Shell” by B. Wallis and Geo. C. Wallis (Weird Tales, November December 1926 January February 1927) When space adventurers arrive on Mars they are greeted by man-eating vines. For more on these cousins, go here.
“The City of Glass” by Joel Martin Nichols Jr (Weird Tales, March 1927) has more Atlantean plants.
“Evolution Island” by Edmond Hamilton (Weird Tales, March 1927) has a mad scientist who evolves trees into an army of sentient soldiers. In usual Hamilton form, two other scientists have to defeat the mad man and his monsters.
“The Blood-Flower” by Seabury Quinn (Weird Tales, March 1927) is a Jules De Grandin mystery where the Blood-Flower is used to turn people into werewolves. Quinn will use the idea again later.
“The Mystery of Sylmare” by Hugh Irish (Weird Tales, July 1927) has an island with fir trees, or are they?
“The Devils of Po Sung” by Bassett Morgan (Weird Tales, December 1927) has Captain McTeague learn just how evil Po Sung really is, and what he keeps in his garden.
“White Orchids” by Gordon Philip England (Weird Tales, December 1927) has orchids that can take care of themselves. Woe to the orchid hunter that smells their bouquet…
“The Giant World” by Ray Cummings (Weird Tales, January February March 1928) is a lengthy adventure with one plant monster in the middle. Frannie, upon entering the Giant world, is attacked by a blood-red vegetable that can detach itself from the ground.
“The Tree-Man Ghost” by Percy B. Prior (Weird Tales, March 1928) has a shadow that is not a man’s but a tree’s!
“The Hungry Plants” (Weird Tales, May 1928) is a sonnet by Donald Wandrei, the first in a series of twelve. This poem describes plants that want to eat the narrator.
“Up Irriwaddy Way” by Lt. Edgar Gardiner (Weird Tales, April 1929) has another explorer encounter a giant Venus Fly-trap.
“Within the Nebula” by Edmond Hamilton (Weird Tales, May 1929) was part of Hamilton’s Interstellar Patrol series. A mysterious planet within the Nebula has a race of plant men.
“The Devil-Plant” by John Murray Reynolds (Weird Tales, September 1928) is a diary of a trip to South America telling all about “The Devil’s Breath”.
“The Gallow’s Tree” by N. J. O’Neail (Weird Tales, December 1929) has a man in Cornwall cross the moors in search of The Tree. A family curse makes this discovery a deadly one.
“The Plant Revolt” by Edmond Hamilton (Weird Tales, April 1930) has another mad scientist produce a gas that makes plants become mobile and carnivorous. And you guessed it: two others scientists have to stop the mad man and his monsters…
“Suzanne” by J. Joseph-Renaud (Weird Tales, April 1930) has a lab with a plant with tentacles like an octopus. You just know this isn’t going to go well…
“The Tree of Life” by Paul Ernst (Weird Tales, September 1930) has as its mystery a green leaf in the middle of a freezing February. The answer is ghosts, not greenhouses.
“A Message From Mars” by Derek Ironside (Weird Tales, November 1930) has explorers to Mars discovering evil, droopy-looking trees. But it is the ants to gotta watch out for!
“The Tree-Man” by Henry S. Whitehead (Weird Tales, March 1931) has a strange African survival on the island of Santa Cruz.
“Ten Million Years Ahead” by Edmond Hamilton (Weird Tales, May 1931) takes us into the future where humans have shrunk and are ruled over by plants.
“The Seeds of Death” by David H. Keller (Weird Tales, June-July 1931) takes us the Spanish castle of a tiger-woman, and her flesh-eating plants…
“The Whisperer in Darkness” by H. P. Lovecraft (Weird Tales, August 1931) is a classic Cthulhu Mythos tale featuring the Fungi from Yuggoth, the Mi-Go. These weird creatures are supposedly plants or part plants. They pose as humans wearing a skin suit, then take your brain and place it in a jar.
“A Voyage to Sfanomoe” by Clark Ashton Smith (Weird Tales, August 1931) gives us two Atlantean travelers who find a grove of magical trees that claim them for their own.
“The Tree-Men of M’Bwa” by Donald Wandrei (Weird Tales, February 1932) is a Lovecraft inspired tale that is also a jungle adventure. Wandrei is one of two brothers who penned plant stories for WT. His brother, Howard, would try it later.
“The Gallows Tree” by Otis Adelbert Kline (Weird Tales, February 1932) is a poem filled with plant verbiage.
“Isle of Doom” by Bassett Morgan (Weird Tales, March 1932) has flesh-eating orchids. And apes.
“Red Hands” by August W. Derleth and Mark Schorer (Weird Tales, October 1932) has two crooks in the jungle stumbling across a killer plants with leaves like red hands.For more on the collaborations of these two, go here.
“The Scarlet Citadel” by Robert E. Howard (Weird Tales, January 1933) has Conan taken prisoner and placed inside a dungeon. There he rescues another prisoner who is subjected to the Black Lotus. Jayem Wilcox chose not to do that scene but Savage Sword of Conan #30 (June 1978) did. The pollen from the plant drugs the mind, enslaving the victim.
“The Mandrakes” by Clark Ashton Smith (Weird Tales, February 1933) has the mandrake roots pointing to the body of a murdered witch.
“The Seed From the Sepulchre” by Clark Ashton Smith (Weird Tales, October 1933) has orchid hunters finding a seed that takes over human bodies. Scott Smith would rewrite this idea into The Ruins many decades later.
“The Cane” by Carl Jacobi (Weird Tales, April 1934) has a cane made from a branch of a death-tree. A death-tree is a tree with the body of a witch-doctor buried inside it. The wood is known to take vengeance on the enemies of the witch doctor. In this case, a man who likes to beat people with his cane gets his just deserts.
“Wild Grapes” by August W. Derleth (Weird Tales, July 1934) starts with the murder of Ralsa Adams and his burial in the wild grapes. Those vines come for revenge…
“Vine Terror” by Howard Wandrei (Weird Tales, September 1934) is B-Movie before such things existed. A killer plant lurks around the laboratory that created it. The H. R. Hammond illo is in the running for worst ever.
“The Flower-Women” by Clark Ashton Smith (Weird Tales, May 1935) is a fantasy tale that features plant women who are also vampires. Vincent Napoli chose to draw the bad guys but the unknown artist of Avon Fantasy Reader #9 (1949) shows both.
“The Black Orchid” by Seabury Quinn (Weird Tales, August 1935) has Jules de Grandin and Doctor Trowbridge battle a vampire who uses a toxic flower to lull his victims. Last time it was a werewolf…
“Vulthoom” by Clark Ashton Smith (Weird Tales, September 1935) is set on Mars where an evil genius turns out to be an alien plant. Some critics of plant SF complained about Stanley G. Weinbaum’s intelligent plant aliens that plants have no reason to develop intelligence. Smith doesn’t worry about this, making his plant man a genius!
“When the Flame-Flowers Blossomed” by Leslie F. Stone (Weird Tales, November 1935) is a Science Fiction piece set on Venus, a planet well-known for its plant horrors. The characters are mobile tree-ferns. I would have thought Stone, one of the better women writers of the time, would have sold this to Astounding or Amazing Stories.
“The Tree of Life” by C. L. Moore (Weird Tales, October 1936) is a space opera featuring Northwest Smith set on Mars, as he faces Thag, the Tree of Life, whose call you can not deny…
“Strange Orchids” by Dorothy Quicks (Weird Tales, March 1937) has a mad man who feeds young girls to his flowers, to devour their beauty and vitality…
“The Seeds From Outside” by Edmond Hamilton (Weird Tales, March 1937) is a silly short tale about jealousy and space seeds with no illustration. A gardener finds two space seeds, plants them. One is male and the other female. The man falls in love with the girl plant but the boy plant’s jealousy ruins everything.
“Raider of the Spaceways” by Henry Kuttner (Weird Tales, July 1937) is a space opera tale featuring a massive ship-grabbing alien plant. While most of the story is a game of cat-and-mouse with pirates, there is a wonderful giant plant monster, perhaps inspired by Stanley G. Weinbaum’s critter from “A Martian Odyssey” (Wonder Stories, July 1934).
“The Garden of Adompha” by Clark Ashton Smith (Weird Tales, April 1938) takes us to the time of Zothique, when our world is very old. Adompha, the king of Sotar, is up to no good in his garden, where dwarfish wizards feed the most terrible of plants…
“Forest of Evil” by John Murray Reynolds (Weird Tales, April 1938) another diary from Reynolds, though this time the diamond hunters are off to Asia and the Forest of Sanaala.
“Isle of the Abominations” by Kadra Maysi (Weird Tales, October 1938) has loggers cutting in a killer forest created by a mad scientist. The trees don’t cotton to the idea.
A seven year drought followed. Dorothy McIlwraith took over Weird Tales in 1940. Eventually she would get back to the killer plants…
“Revolt of the Trees” by Allison V. Harding (Weird Tales, January 1945) has a man planning to cut down the local forest die by the branches of those very trees.
“Seed” by Jack Snow (Weird Tales, January 1946) has a priest, then a woman, warn a scientist about what would come out of that strange seed…
“Tree Woman” by Dorothy Quick (Weird Tales, March 1946) is a poem about druidic powers that remain and the green queen who still reigns.
“The Cactus” by Mildred Johnson (Weird Tales, January 1950) has a gift of a cactus come from Los Angeles. The verdict may be a terrible accident but those spikes in her throat…
“The Tree’s Wife” by Mary Elizabeth Counselman (Weird Tales, March 1950) is a return to the fantasy of A. Merritt. A strange legend from Bald Mountain tells of Florella who married a tree…
1951 saw the Science Fiction classic The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham. This novel of Wellsian disaster and man-made killer plants raised the bar and ordinary killer vines became much rarer. Weird Tales had two left to publish.
“The Little Tree” by C. F. Birdsall (Weird Tales, May 1952) the old bachelor had a family in the woods, one that was green in color.
“Strange Harvest” by Donald Wandrei (Weird Tales, May 1953) takes a page from Edmond Hamilton’s book with all plants throwing off the yoke of man. How would you like to pick some apples?
“Whisper Water” by Leah Bodine Drake (Weird Tales, May 1953) is unusual in that Ms. Drake usually wrote poetry. This story is one of two that appeared in Weird Tales. The natives used to tell of a willow-woman who haunted the swamp….
Conclusion
There they are. All those weird and wonderful plants. I have to finish with acknowledging Clark Ashton Smith as THE Weird Tales plant writer with four stories. Also of note, four times two plant stories appeared in the same issue, three times under Wright and once with McIlwraith. With comic books I noticed that the plant stories usually appeared in May at the height of allergy season. Weird Tales tended to spread them out over the year.
I would like to acknowledge Timothy S. Miller’s excellent Plant Database for information and suggestions.
