The Plant.

 

Madagascar. The Masoloa Peninsula. 1970.

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Bugs, Spiders, Reptiles. All those things that a Naturalist is supposed to leap head over heels about. John Bishop loathed.

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Hewing through the dense forest in front of him. He had all these things in the back of his mind. But tried forcefully to keep them there whilst focusing all his attention on the job in hand. To become the first person to find and photograph the fabled Madagascar Man eating plant.

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He would have been laughed out of the country if he had told his fellow Naturalists why he was really taking an expedition to Madagascar. He had told them was to examine the flora and fauna of the region and to bring back examples of rare plants. Just a little white lie. It was a plant he was after, after all.

He had first read of the existence of this plant back in England. In an old book a close friend had given him. The Madagascar Man Eating plant. It seemed to fantastical for words. But John had always thought that in rumour there always existed a grain of truth.

 He’d been to Madagascar once before and had bought back various plants and seeds to England. Some to propagate himself, some to be handed over to his local University in Sussex.

He came to a small clearing amongst the trees. His companion and guide Manu stopped and unloaded his backpack. They would camp here for the night and continue in the morning.

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Arundel. Sussex. 1970

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Lydia Bishop enjoyed pottering around in the garden. Especially so when her husband John was away on one of his many expeditions. Tending to the vegetable garden was her biggest joy. Seeing plants that magically produced food for the table was a wonder to her. She felt a real sense of achievement when she harvested the crop.

She had recently planted tomato and courgette plants. and was pleased to see they were growing nicely. Small flowers had formed on them already and hopefully they would be pollinated soon, and she’d have a nice crop of both.

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Back in Masoloa. John and his guide had continued to chop away at the dense forest. The heat of the day causing droplets of perspiration to sting his eyes. But soon he hoped to come across the plant he so obsessed about. The plant that sounded like fiction, but he was sure existed. He had talked to many of the local Mkodo tribe. They had convinced him of its existence, but only one of them wanted to take him to the place it grew. His guide Manu would take him part of the way.

Manu soon gesticulated to a trail further on telling John he’d go no further. So, John continued up the trail on his own. Manu gave him a dismissive look as he went on his way. John knew Manu thought of him as a fool, but he didn’t care. This would be the discovery of the century. A plant only talked about in a rare ancient botany book. A plant that, if the stories were to be believed, ad octopus like tendrils growing from its thick, woody, fungus like trunk. Tendrils that could reach out and grab any passing animal or man. Strangle it and digest its flesh. A nightmare Venus flytrap if you will.

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He finally came to the clearing where he expected to see the plant. The shock of what he saw made his heart skip a beat. Instead of the beautiful nightmare he had expected. There was death. The huge plant before him was dead and had clearly been dead many years. Shrivelled tendrils and brown rotting leaves were all that was left of the only living specimen of the rarest plant on earth.

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He looked around the clearing. Something stirred in his memory. Hadn’t he been close to this area before? Not on this very spot but close? Wasn’t this close to the place he’d collected the seeds to take back to England to propagate years before?

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Feeling defeated he headed back to the village. He’d stay a while in Madagascar. He may as well explore and at least look for something interesting to take back with him to England.

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Back in Arundel, it had been six months since John had been gone. He was due back any day now but to be honest Lydia was enjoying the solitude.

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More time left to tend to the vegetable garden. The tomatoes were coming on a dream. John had given her several seeds. A Madagascan Mixture he had called them. They had been lying in a packet in the greenhouse for at least a year if she remembered rightly. Would they still germinate? Worth a go she thought. Though probably chillies as that seemed to be the only seeds her husband ever sent to her.

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Returning to the patch a few weeks later She looked closely at the plant that had grown so quickly from seed. .The flowers had all but disappeared. The long green stem was more of the woody, mushroom type now. It had grown to an extraordinary four feet. Large for a Chili she thought. And the leaves, very thin and looking more like large tendrils.

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It looked ugly and to be honest spoiled the look of the patch. Tomorrow she would come back and dig it up.

Lydia turned to go. Then something caught her eye. She bent down and looked closely at the plant, her head only centimetres from its horrible tendril like leaves. Did that one move?

No, plants can’t move she thought.

Unfortunately for Lydia she could not have been more wrong.