You’re probably familiar with plants that move and fight in modern fiction: the “Whomping Willow” on the grounds of Harry Potter’s Hogwarts school; the Peashooters from the Plants vs. Zombies video games; the evil vines defeated by Princess Twilight Sparkle in the cartoon series My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic; and so on. But you may be surprised to learn that storytellers have imagined lively leafy plant-monsters for thousands of years.
In the ancient Roman Empire, a writer named Lucian of Samosata included dangerous trees in a tale that is often considered the first science fiction story. Humorously titled A True Story, this make-believe tale described an encounter between adventuring sailors and tempting tree-women:
Ludvig Holberg’s tree people