Then they plant the apple core in the garden, and a large tree grows from it.ĭecades pass, and one day the tree is blown over in a storm. They give it to Digory’s bedridden mother, who eats it and finds her sickness is miraculously healed. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew as a kid.Īt the very end of the book, when Polly and Digory come back to the real world, they bring back an apple Aslan has given them from a tree in Narnia (Biblical references abound!). I never really believed I could be as affected by a plant, however magical, as I could by a real living character. As I said before, while I don’t hate magical vegetation, it doesn’t thrill me. So while pondering the slightly absurd topic of self-aware vegetation, I was trying to decide what my favourite fantasy plant was.Īt first none really struck me as particularly memorable or delighful. No wonder people thought they were “magical”. Interestingly, in real life Mandrake plants have long been associated with magic-turns out their roots often do look humanoid, and contain “deliriant hallucinogenic tropane alkaloids”. The scream is so deadly the characters have to wear earmuffs when handling them. These plants have roots that look like little human babies and scream when exposed.
I think the Mandrakes in Harry Potter also slip over into this category. In Disney’s Pocahontas (not my most favourite of films), Grandmother Willow gives Pocahontas advice and guidance. The Neverending Story also had Bark Trolls-similarly tree-ish creatures that walk and talk like humans-though they didn’t feature prominently. Not all the trees in his forest are like him, but by the end of The Two Towers we’ve learned that those other trees are still capable of swallowing up and destroying an army. He walks and talks, and has the slow, creaky pace one might expect from a tree. Treebeard is the Ent we come to know best: a tree-herder. Of course the first and most famous example that springs to mind here are the Ents in Lord of the Rings. The no-holds-barred, talking, thinking, character-like type of fantasy flora. They’re always ready to offer a root to lean on, or some symbolic, non-verbal advice. These ones seem content to have people sit under them thinking deep thoughts. There’s also the wizened gnarled oak variety. Now those menacing trees seem to be watching them, conspiring against them, growing ever thicker and more oppressive… They’ve already been warned coming here was a bad idea, and someone’s told the obligatory tale-of-woe about the last unfortunate souls who never made it out… but here they are anyway. Picture a dark, ancient forest where the trees loom over a small band of travellers. The kind that doesn’t move or speak but seems vaguely, often creepily, aware of the characters and what they’re doing. Perhaps the most common type of sentient plant life, and the most subtle. The Quasi-Sentient (They’re Watching You) Within this spectrum, I could think of four distinct types.ġ. In fantasy you can get anything ranging from a slight suggestion of consciousness, through to full-blown walking talking thinking plants. That said, I was recently reading John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things, and while the magical trees didn’t bother me, I did find all the flowers with little children’s faces a tad disturbing… but then I think that was the point.Īnyway, my friend’s passionate dislike got me to thinking about sentient vegetation in general.
They don’t thrill me, but I tend to just accept them as another staple of fantasy. Personally, I’ve got nothing against talking plants. But trees that talk, or walk, or are in any way sentient? She finds them stupid. Talking animals are fine, and she’s happy to accept a whole range of other incongruous fantasy logic (for example, werewolves that turn back into humans and still have their clothes on). I have a friend who cannot stand talking trees in fiction.
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