Header image for a 1933 article in the Evening Star (Washington DC)
WHEN an animal bites a plant, that is hardly news. Animals are doing that all the time: Cows and caterpillars, mice and men; they’d die very soon if they didn’t. But when a plant bites an animal there may be an interesting story in it. There are, indeed, a great many interesting stories that might be told of plants that eat animals, in spite of the fact that there are not many such plants, and that the most widespread and sensational of such stories aren’t so.
The tales about the man-eating tree of Madagascar are about the most completely hardy perennial species in all popular pseudo scientific literature, and also about the most completely unproved. They go with the similar yarns about the deadly upas tree of the East Indies—the tree that was said to knock down men and animals with its mere poisonous breath.
Both the Madagascar monster and the poison scented upas must go the way of all myth…