Man-eating tree can refer to any of various legendary or cryptid carnivorous
plants that are large enough to kill and consume a person or other large animal.
In actuality, the carnivorous plant with the largest known traps is probably
Nepenthes rajah, which produces pitchers up to 38 cm tall with a volume of up to
3.5 litres. This species may rarely trap small mammals.
The Madagascar tree The earliest well known report of a
man-eating tree originated as a literary fabrication written by Edmund Spencer
for the New York World. Spencer's article first appeared in the daily
edition of the New York World on 26 April 1874, and appeared again in the
weekly edition of the newspaper two days later. In the article, a letter was
published by a purported German explorer named "Karl Liche", who provided a
report of encountering a sacrifice performed by the "Mkodo tribe" of
Madagascar: This story was picked up by many other newspapers of the day,
including the South Australian Register of 27 October 1874, where it gained even
greater notoriety. Describing the tree, the account related:
The slender delicate palpi, with the fury of starved serpents, quivered a
moment over her head, then as if instinct with demoniac intelligence
fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms; then while
her awful screams and yet more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly
strangled down again into a gurgling moan, the tendrils one after another,
like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity, rose,
retracted themselves, and wrapped her about in fold after fold, ever
tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anacondas fastening
upon their prey. The tree was given further publicity by
Madagascar, Land of the Man-eating Tree, a book by Chase Osborn, who had been a
Governor of Michigan. Osborn claimed that both the tribes and missionaries on
Madagascar knew about the hideous tree, and also repeated the above Liche
account. In his 1955 book, Salamanders and other
Wonders, science author Willy Ley determined that the Mkodo tribe, Carl
Liche, and the Madagascar man-eating tree itself all appeared to be
fabrications. The Nubian tree
Phil Robinson, writing in Under the Punkah, related the tales of his
"uncle's" travels throughout the world. He described a "man-eating tree" that
was to be found in "Nubia". In the tale, Robinson's uncle describes the tree:
This awful plant, that rears its splendid death-shade in the central
solitude of a Nubian fern forest, sickens by its unwholesome humours all
vegetation from its immediate vicinity, and feeds upon the wild beasts that, in
the terror of the chase, or the heat of noon, seek the thick shelter of its
boughs ; upon the birds that, flitting across the open space, come within the
charmed circle of its power, or innocently refresh themselves from the
cups of its great waxen flowers ; upon even man himself when, an infrequent
prey, the savage seeks its asylum in the storm, or turns from the harsh
foot-wounding sword-grass of the glade, to pluck the wondrous fruit that hang
plumb down among the wondrous foliage. And such fruit ! Glorious golden ovals,
great honey drops, swelling by their own weight into pear-shaped translucencies.
The foliage glistens with a strange dew, that all day long drips on to the ground
below, nurturing a rank growth of grasses, which shoot up in places so
high that their spikes of fierce blood-fed green show far up among the
deep-tinted foliage of the terrible tree, and, like a jealous body-guard,
keep concealed the fearful secret of the charnel-house within, and draw round the
black roots of the murderous plant a decent screen of living green.
The story continues in describing how the tree captured and ate one of the
uncle's native companions, and how the uncle proceeded to shoot at the tree.
When his ammunition was finally exhausted, the uncle continued his work
using a knife to destroy the tree, as the tree fought back with its
blood-sucking leaves, and entangling limbs.
The Ya-te-veo In J. W. Buel's Sea and Land, the
Ya-te-veo plant is described as being native to Africa and Central America,
and having "stems" that resemble "many huge serpents in an angry discussion,
occasionally darting from side to side as if striking at an imaginary foe,"
while attempting to consume humans. The Vampire Vine
William Thomas Stead, editor of Review of Reviews, published a brief article
that discussed a story purportedly found in Lucifer magazine, describing a plant
in Nicaragua called by the natives The Devil's Snare. This plant had the
capability "to drain the blood of any living thing which comes within its
death-dealing touch." According to the article:
Mr. Dunstan, naturalist, who has recently returned from Central America,
where he spent nearly two years in the study of the flora and the fauna of the
country, relates the finding of a singular growth in one of the swamps
which surround the great lakes of Nicaragua. He was engaged in hunting for
botanical and entomological specimens, when he heard his dog cry out, as if in
agony, from a distance, Running to the spot whence the animal's cries came. Mr.
Dunstan found him enveloped in a perfect network of what seemed to be a fine
rope-like tissue of roots and fibres... The native servants who accompanied Mr.
Dunstan manifested the greatest horror of the vine, which they call "the
devil's snare," and were full of stories of its death-dealing powers. He was able
to discover very little about the nature of the plant, owing to the difficulty of
handling it, for its grasp can only be torn away with the loss of skin and even
of flesh; but, as near as Mr. Dunstan could ascertain, its power of suction is
contained in a number of infinitesimal mouths or little suckers, which,
ordinarily closed, open for the reception of food. If the substance is
animal, the blood is drawn off and the carcass or refuse then dropped.
An investigation of Stead's "review" determined that there was no article
published in Lucifer magazine about such a subject, and that the story in Review
of Reviews appeared to be a fabrication by the editor.
Literature "The Purple Terror" by Fred M. White is
a man-eating tree and the story was collected with the relevant section of
Phil Robinson's book, "The Man-Eating Tree", in Flora Curiosa: Cryptobotany,
Mysterious Fungi, Sentient Trees, and Deadly Plants in Classic Science Fiction
and Fantasy. This anthology also includes H. G. Wells' "The Flowering of
the Strange Orchid" about an orchid capable of consuming a human.
In Francis Stevens' story "The Nightmare", the flora on the mysterious
island includes man-eating plants. In Piers Anthony's fantasy novels of
Xanth, there are carnivorous "tangle trees". The trees magically create easy,
open paths leading to them; their tentacles then catch animals that
approach too closely. In the fantasy novel Beyond the
Deepwoods, the first story in Paul Stewart and Chris Riddell's The Edge
Chronicles series, the protagonist Twig encounters a man-eating tree called a
Bloodoak. A parasitic symbiotic plant, known as the tarryvine, snares victims
and then drags them to the Bloodoak where they are devoured.
In the fantasy adventure novel Life of Pi, a shipwrecked boy lands on an island
inhabited by meerkats and discovers that the trees on the island are carnivorous.
In "The Sagebrush Kid", a short story in Annie Proulx's Fine Just the Way It Is,
a childless Wyoming couple transfer their affections first to a piglet, then
a chicken, and finally to a sagebrush they fancy has the appearance of a
child. They tend and protect it, and even feed it bones and stray scraps of
meat from their dinner table. Even after the couples' death, the shrub - now
grown to the height of a fair-sized tree - is accustomed to human attention, and
meat. It consumes livestock, then soldiers, then a local medico, railroad
men, surveyors, and most lately a botanist come to investigate its unusual
height and luxuriance. In the dystopian novel Shades of Grey 1:
The Road to High Saffron, the first book in Jasper Fforde's Shades of Grey
series, there are carnivorous trees. In the Star Trek novel Planet of
Judgment by Joe Haldeman, the flora on a planet includes a carnivorous plant
capable of engulfing and digesting an adult human. After a crewman is
attacked, the rest of the away team tries to cut him out of the plant, but
are too late. The description of the aftermath reads "Hevelin's body looked
like a botched autopsy." See also
Carnivorous plant: Cultural depictions Cryptobotany
Old Man Willow Puya chilensis
Umdhlebi Upas tree
References Further reading
Michell, John; Rickard, Bob. The Rough Guide to Unexplained Phenomena. Rough
Guides. pp. 319–321. ISBN 1843537087.