PlantoidThe Harmonics
Plant-people appear in folklore as the Green Man and in fiction from 'The Day of the Triffids' to countless tree spirits. The Plantoid is the Atlas's speculative botanical intelligence: long-lived, slow, and organised around growth rather than movement.
At a glance
- Home system
- Various
- Avg. height
- 6′7″ – 9′10″
- Appearance
- Plant-like, bark skin, leaf crown
- Reported lifespan
- 500 – 1,000 years (lore)
- Social structure
- Described as rooted collectives
- Technology
- Described as grown, not built
- Primary traits
- Harmonious, wise, slow
- Relationship to Earth
- Unclear
Physical profile
The Plantoid is a humanoid of bark, vine and leaf: a tall figure with a face of textured wood, a crown of foliage, green eyes and limbs that branch. Colouring changes with the season in some renderings. The type is slow-moving and, in the lore, very old.
Reported origin
Unspecified. The Plantoid is defined by body plan, and the sources are folklore and fiction.
Culture
Rooted collectives, patient and harmonious, communicating through the ground.
Technology
Grown, not built.
Craft
Not described.
Communication
Chemical and slow, in the speculative literature; spoken in fiction.
Earth encounters
There are no cases. The plant-person runs from the Green Man of medieval church carving through the dryads of Greek myth to the Triffids of John Wyndham (1951), the Ents of Tolkien and the Groot of Marvel comics. Botanists have found that plants signal, remember and respond to their environment in ways that give the old image a modern footing.
Lore & history
XenoAtlas lists the Plantoid as speculative, fictional and folkloric.
The Green Man, a foliate face carved into hundreds of medieval churches, is the Plantoid's clearest ancestor; its meaning is still debated.
Source notes
- Green Man folklore; plant intelligence in fiction · folklore / fiction
- John Wyndham, The Day of the Triffids (1951) · fictionFind on Amazon
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XenoAtlas documents extraterrestrial concepts appearing in mythology, contactee literature, popular culture, speculative accounts, and related sources. Inclusion does not constitute scientific verification.
Related species
See every type in the Types of Aliens guide.