| Summary: | This paper argues for a specifically Darwinian etiology of the image of the monstrous plant, so ubiquitous in the modern genres of speculative fiction. In the profusion of such narratives in the late 19th century, we can identify a collective anxiety about the implications of universal common descent: acknowledging a shared evolutionary heritage for plants and animals threatens the boundary between the two kingdoms that had always permitted the purely instrumentalist and exploitative relationship between humans and plants. Evolutionary anxiety projected onto the figure of the man-eating plant only multiplied in the early pulp magazines, and continued on through John Wyndham's triffids and beyond. Considering the many monstrous plants of early speculative fiction in this way can help expand the purview of the critical formation known as animal studies: while this paper does not advocate for the development of a "plant studies," it invites further thinking about the implications of taking the word "species" in animal studies a little more literally, as the word so often seems to mean "mammal species" or "animal species."
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