The Man-eating Madagascar Tree

Truc Doan

English 212-005

Mr. B

15 March 2023

The Man-eating Madagascar

Summary

In 1874, a letter emerged proclaiming the existence of a carnivorous tree capable of eating a human being. It's said to exist in Madagascar, Central America and other parts of Africa. But could such a plant actually exist or is it just the stuff of legend? Readers were not ready for Edmund Spencer’s article about the tree from Madagascar in the New York World newspaper, published on 26 April 1874. Spencer reported that he had received a letter from a Karl Leche, a German explorer travelling through the island nation.

History

First reported in 1881 by a German explorer Carl Liche, it was said to be a sacred and much-feared plant used in sacrifice rituals by the native Mkodo tribe. The explorer claimed his observation was cut short by natives shrieking wildly around the tree. But the interruption allowed him to witness an eating ritual. Leche wrote that the tribe surrounded a woman and, using spears, forced her to climb to the top of the tree, where she became dinner: “the slender delicate palpi, with the fury of starved serpents, stopped for a moment over her head, then as if it had demoniac intelligence fastened upon her in sudden coils around her neck and arms; then while her awful screams, the tendrils one after another, like great green serpents, with brutal energy and infernal rapidity, rose, retracted themselves, and wrapped her about in fold after fold, ever-tightening with cruel swiftness and savage tenacity of anacondas fastening upon their prey.” In addition, this fiction story also appealed to people because, as reporter Edmund Spencer was counting on, it horrified them that something so well-known and widely considered to be beautiful had the potential to be this terribly frightening.

Description

Leche found the man-eating tree near the bend in a stream and vividly described it as such:

"if you can imagine a pineapple, eight feet high and thick in proportion, resting upon its base, and denuded of leaves, you will have a good idea of the trunk of the tree, … From the apex of this truncated cone (at least two feet in diameter) eight leaves hung sheer to the ground, like doors slung back on their hinges. These leaves, which were joined at the top of the tree at regular intervals, were about eleven or twelve feet long, and shaped very much like the American agave or century plant. They were two feet through the thickest part and three feet wide, tapering to a sharp point that looked like a cow’s horn, very convex on the outer surface and on the inner surface, slightly concave. This concave face was thickly set with very strong thorny hooks, like those upon the head of the cone. These leaves, hanging thus limp and lifeless, dead green in color, had in appearance the massive strength of oak fibre. The apex of the cone was a round, white, concave figure, like a small plate set within a smaller one. This was not a flower, but a receptacle, and there exuded into it a clear, treacly liquid, honey-sweet, and possessed of violent intoxicating soporific properties. From underneath the rim, so to speak, of the undermost plate, a series of long, hairy, green tendrils stretched in every direction towards the horizon. These were about seven or eight feet long each and tapered from four inches to a half inch in diameter, yet they stretched out stiffly as iron rods. Above these, from between the upper and under cup, six white, almost transparent, palpi reared themselves, towards the sky, twirling and twisting with a marvelous incessant motion, yet constantly reaching upward. Thin as reeds and frail as quills apparently, they were yet five or six feet tall, and were so constantly and vigorously in motion, with such a subtle, sinuous, silent throbbing against the air, that they made me shudder, in spite of myself, with their suggestion of serpents flayed, yet dancing on their tails." This is quoted from "The Myth and Mayhem of the Man-Eating Tree of Madagascar."

Adaptations

·      Yateveo- Yateveo plant is described as being native to Africa and South America, so named for producing a hissing sound similar to the Spanish phrase ya te veo, and having poisonous "spines" that resemble "many huge serpents in an angry discussion, occasionally darting from side to side as if striking at an imaginary foe" which seize and pierce any creature coming within reach.

·      The Vampire Vine- describing a plant in Nicaragua called by the natives the devil's snare. This plant had the capability "to drain the blood of any living thing which comes within its death-dealing touch.”

Work cited

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-carnivorous-plants-evolved-180979697/

Botanicult fiction: The man-eating tree of Madagascar. Royal Botanical Gardens. (2020, June 25). Retrieved March 15, 2023, from https://www.rbg.ca/the-man-eating-tree-of-madagascar/

Hartzman, M., & Lambert, J. (2018, April 18). *The myth and mayhem of the man-eating tree of Madagascar*. Weird Historian. Retrieved March 15, 2023, from https://www.weirdhistorian.com/the-myth-and-mayhem-of-the-man-eating-tree-of-madagascar/

Laroche, N. R. (n.d.). *Man-eating trees are a myth... update: Trees don't eat women either!* Urban Fictionary. Retrieved March 15, 2023, from https://sites.smith.edu/fys169-f19/2019/11/27/man-eating-trees-are-a-myth-update-trees-dont-eat-women-either/

Magazine, S. (2022, March 9). How carnivorous plants evolved. Smithsonian.com. Retrieved March 15, 2023, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-carnivorous-plants-evolved-180979697/

YouTube. (2017, August 28). *The man-eating tree of Madagascar*. YouTube. Retrieved March 15, 2023, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxBOO-KU9C8