Triffids (The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham): Although the bioengineered Triffids appear sentient and have a deadly sting, humanity farms them for their oil. But when most of humanity is blinded by a meteor shower, Triffids take advantage of mankind’s sudden weakness and begin to break free and turn on their former captors. It was made into the classic 1962 film and a 1981 BBC television serial.

The Vines (The Ruins): Vines may seem like a fairly mundane feature of the ruins of a Mayan temple. But these vines are deadly, eating away at human flesh and leaving their spores to germinate inside the human body. And they’re tricky creatures, too, causing cell phones to ring and mimicking human voices.

Killer Tomatoes (Attack of the Killer Tomatoes): After years of smothering our burgers in ketchup, the tomatoes take their revenge. Giant tomatoes invade the cities of the world, chowing down on the tomato-eating populace.

The Thing (The Thing From Another World): When the US Air Force discovers the body of a plant-based alien frozen in ice, they accidentally thaw it, leaving it to wreak havoc across Alaska. The Thing needs human blood to reproduce, but fortunately, like so many killer plants, is vulnerable to electricity.

The Seeds (Doctor Who “Seeds of Doom”): Another alien lands in an icy part of the world, this time Antarctica. Scientists discover a pair of giant seed pods and bring them back to their base for study. But as they thaw, instead of eating the scientists, they sting one of them, turning him into a murderous plant creature.

The Sarlaac (Star Wars): The Sarlaac has puzzled xenobiologists with its plant and animal qualities, but it is best known for its digestive system. A humanoid could spend a thousand years in the sarlaac’s digestive tract before being fully digested, and, while it doesn’t eat frequently, it has been known to use its tentacles to grab onto its prey.

Biollante (Godzilla vs Biollante): Biolante starts life as a rose-like monster, with constricting vines and stinging teeth along her bud. But Godzilla’s atomic beam mutates her further, giving her a giant head with an enormous jaw and set of teeth, spines running down her back, and four roots for legs. In either form, she is bent on defeating Godzilla.

Lyekka (Lexx): Lyekka is a carnivorous plant who, upon encountering the Lexx, scans Stanley Tweedle’s mind and takes the form of his school crush. She is fond of Stanley, but has been known to dine on other space travelers.

The Weeds (“The Weeds” by Stephen King): When Jordy Verrill discovers a meteorite, he sees dollar signs, thinking the alien rock will pay of his bank account. But the plant-like organism living on the meteorite quickly takes over his body, covering it in tenacious extraterrestrial grass. Unable to do anything about the plant creatures transforming his body, Verrill turns to suicide, but the weeds are undeterred, running across his property and out into the world. The story was adapted for the King anthology film Creepshow.

Pod People (Invasion of the Body Snatchers): The people of Santa Mira, California notice something strange about their loved ones, who look the same but no longer display any emotions. Soon, some of the townspeople discover the truth: huge pod plants are growing exact duplicates of existing humans, duplicates that go on to kill and replace their human counterparts.

Tybo (Lost in Space “The Great Vegetable Rebellion”): When Dr. Smith arrives on a planet of sentient plants, he makes the mistake of picking a flower and incurring the wrath of Tybo the giant carrot. Though hostile, Tybo isn’t exactly murderous. He just wants to turn the Robinsons into trees and Dr. Smith into a stalk of celery.

The Trees (Evil Dead): The first Evil Dead film has one of the more disturbing sequences of attack by vegetation when Cheryl is attacked and brutally raped by a demon-possessed tree. In Evil Dead II, Bobby Jo is also attacked by trees, although in a less horrific fashion.

The Doll’s Eye (Minority Report): When John Anderton goes to visit researcher Iris Hineman, he ends up tangoing with one of her more active vines, which delivers a poison into his bloodstream. Fortunately, Dr. Hineman keeps the antidote hand.

Audrey II (Little Shop of Horrors): Downtrodden Seymour Krelborn has a change in fortune when he brings the unusual plant Audrey II (named for his beloved coworker Audrey) to the flower shop where he works. He is somewhat less delighted when he realizes the plant needs human blood to survive, though he lets himself get talked into bringing her fresh human meat. Little does he know that Audrey II is, in fact, an alien bent on world domination.

Pa’u Zotoh Zhaan (Farscape): Zhaan is a Delvian, a species of sentient, meat-eating plants. If deprived of meat for too long, Delvians emit a toxic pollen which paralyzes potential victims with sneezing, making them easy prey. Zhaan herself turned to religion while serving a sentence for murder and, while generally a patient and tolerant person, does possess a darker side.

Swamp Thing (Swamp Thing): Following an explosion in his lab, chemist Alec Holland dies in a swamp, where his personality and memories are transferred to the swamp vegetation, becoming sentient. The elemental Swamp Thing becomes a fierce defender of humanity and the environment. Some of Swamp Thing’s foes are also plant-based, such as the Floronic Man, who was once human, but has gradually transformed himself into a plant.

All the Plants on Earth (The Happening): One day, the whole of the plant kingdom apparently decides that it’s had it with humanity and decides to do something about it. The plants release a neurotoxin that causes the affected to commit suicide, stopping when an adequate proportion of humanity is killed.

According to an article in Thursday's Daily Mail, Plantware CEO Gordon E. Glaze wants us living like this before another decade passes:

Mr Glaze, 38, together with his two partners Yael Stav, 35 and Yaniv Naftaly, 35 have spent the past ten years developing and perfecting the science of aeroponics to the stage where Gordon believes that real life 'tree-house' could be possible within ten years.

'At a cellular level we can tell the tree how to grow to a template. This means that we can now mass produce roots and trees in an industrial building level, like steel girders.

'We can create a living building material now that enables you to cast trees like they are cement,' Glaze said.

The Plantware crew has already pioneered their ideas in building smaller-scale structures, like bus stops and park benches. After an initial period of supported growth, the trees bend into their desired shapes and remain sturdy yet flexible. For more complex buildings like houses, Plantware's ideas run deeper; they've designed environmental measures like air circulation through leaves, gravity plumbing (hoo boy), and a composting vat. And they haven't left aesthetics or practicality out of the equation.

Mr Glaze said they would be ecologically responsible by matching tree-homes to their environment. So British tree-dwellers would live in sturdy oak or willow homes and those in California could have giant American redwood pads.

Well, that does sound fantastic. Unfortunately, there's no word yet on whether this cellular-level aeroponic manipulation can make trees flame-retardant.

Returning to our roots: Scientists claim they will grow tree homes in a decade [Daily Mail Online]

First of all, the most important thing is to get back to trees' edgy beginnings. (Or, yes, their roots.) Back when trees started out, they were totally bad-ass and dark. People used to be scared going into a forest, not so much with the swinging picnic basket and off-road SUV-ing. As with so many classic monsters, trees have lost their edge. Sure, they occasionally score a victory, but we need a full-fledged tree resurgence.

Because we believe in democracy — unlike trees, which wish to impose their dictatorial will upon you and make you their unthinking fertilizer-dispensing-slave — we decided to consult you about reinventing trees in a new image. (Note: I came up with these tree-related questionnaires last week, before we decided to do the villain cage match thing. I'm not going poll-crazy or anything.)

First of all, there's the issue of costume. Many a villain has suffered under the "lame" banner due to a weak costume. Take poor Star Sapphire, who was literally unable to rotate her torso more than 15 degrees in her new costume for fear of making her Zamaron bikini wax the subject of heroic banter. What kind of costume do trees have? None, currently. At all. This is obviously a major source of the problem. What can we do about this?

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And then there's the catchphrase. Can you even remember trees' current catchphrase? Much less repeat it to your friends as a cheap in-joke when you're stoned in front of the TV at three A.M.? Everybody remembers "Resistance is futile," or "Exterminate." But what have trees got? Help them out:

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And then there's this:

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Okay, so it may seem off the top of your head like trees don't really need a secret identity, in which case you're free to vote your opinion — until trees conquer, and take your freedom of choice away, that is. But think about it for a moment: Trees have many awesome powers, but one of their biggest drawbacks is a lack of mobility. They can't actually sneak up on anyone. They tend to be better at hatching incredibly cunning long-term plans — trees are patient, they can wait forever — than they are at swinging into action.

So just think how shocking it would be if, say, our hero thought she had found true love at last — but it turned out she had been tricked into falling in love with trees. Or, I don't know, if you suddenly realized that the ATM that you'd be taking money from all this time was really a tree in disguise — and now trees could steal your identity. You never thought about that, did you?

And here's another idea: what about a storyline where someone travels forward in time, to an alternate future where trees have won? A tree-world, where the last surviving people cower in caves or desert areas, or possibly hide out in undersea strongholds from the tree overlords. Where humans are reduced to being the moth-culling, squirrel-eating, blight-scraping slaves of the tree overlords? Maybe the trees perform fiendish experiments on these future humans, to help them grow bark or start shedding tree-like pollen, so the trees would be able to tell us apart. Or, or, or — what if these future despotic trees tried to find a way to make half-human, half-bird hybrids? What could this future nightmare be called? "The Gathering Shade"? "Leaves Of Future Past"?

It's also not too soon to start thinking about what villains the trees could team up with. There's a long and proud tradition of plant monsters, including the Triffids and the creatures from Little Shop Of Horrors. Plus don't forget the Krynoid! And the Vervoids! But our sinister saplings don't have to restrict themselves to teaming up with other plants. They could join forces with aliens, including silicon-based life forms. Any ice-based or flame-retardant creatures might be handy allies for the tree army, since they could serve as a nice fire break against forest fires.

But realistically, we can't restore trees to their full villain potential on our own. Which brings us to our next question:

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How have we lived so long in ignorance of the deadly threat that the tree legion poses to us, as a civilization? Will we wake up in time? Is it already too late to stop trees in their relentless advance towards total conquest? The answer, dear readers, is up to you. Scary tree images by Akira_Kev, Nalilo, and Camera Eye.

Images by Milo Keller

Oloom via Dezeen

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• Massive quantities of helium were discovered leaking out of the ground in Nevada. This mysterious gas emission is even stranger because usually geologists only see this kind of thing near volcanoes. Is Nevada about to become a volcanic hellhole? [Discovery News]
• 10,000-year-old trees were discovered during a construction project on a farm in Michigan. They are among the best-preserved fossilized trees ever found, and scientsts speculate that they were crushed under the last glacier to stretch across North America. [Science Daily]
  

• A Japanese court ruled today that a grieving widow would receive compensation from Toyota because the company killed her husband with overwork. The 30-year-old man died after working 60 hours/week for a month, and then 70 hours/week for an additional month. In Japanese, there is a word for death from overwork: karōshi. [Autoblog]
  
• Scientists have just announced a "map of genetic aging" in mice. The map shows a series of genes whose behavior changes as the mice age. Since human and mouse genomes are fairly similar, researchers hope to use this map to find similar "aging genes" in humans, and perhaps tinker with those genes to reverse the aging process. [PLoS Genetics]
  
• If you're thinking of getting a genetic test, think again. Most experts say the tests are a total waste of money and tell us next to nothing. Even though there are more and more genetic tests every day, they aren't getting any more accurate or reliable. [Reuters]