Springtime
is in the air. The birds are chirping. The flowers are blooming. Pollen
is drifting through the wind, taking hold and situating itself to help
bring about new and exciting leafy living things to make our lives
enriched. As a result, welcome to our latest CHUD List, a look at the
20 best plants in film history. A few things to consider:

Anne
Ramsey was not officially a plant, so she is excused from this list.
The same goes for Maude Adams, Jack Elam, and that thing on Aaron
Neville.

Also, fuck The Happening. And here we go!

4. Treebeard

Exterior: A big, gnarled, barky tree version of the guy on the Aqualung album cover.

Interior: He may be tough on the outside, but he’s all sappy on the inside

The Film: The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)
 
Leafy Truths: Stoners love Treebeard. The ancient Ent – the race of talking, walking trees living in Middle Earth – is like the patron saint of people too blitzed to do anything. Why? Because he has a long, mossy beard and because he talks so slow. It’s like looking in a mirror for these fuxored bonghitters. Like looking in a totally crazy mirror for hours and slowly waving their hands in front of their faces.

Actually, stoners love The Lord of the Rings in general. They like all the pipe smoking, I think.

Root of Evil: Treebeard’s not evil. He’s a total chill dude, in fact. He’s against industrialization and stuff. He’d probably let you have your music and arts festival in his forest. He’s just really old, possibly the oldest thing in Middle Earth. He lives in the Fangorn Forest, and he’s kind of bummed out because he lost his Entwives. He hasn’t been able to nut in a long time. Get it, nut? Because it’s slang for ejaculate and it’s also… how trees… reproduce. Yeah.


Exclusive first look at a younger Treebeard in the prequel to The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit.

 
Gardening Tips:
Treebeard is a pretty easy Ent to take care of; as Merry and Pippin discover, he brews his own at home. Moonshine, Ent style!

Its Place in Plantdom:
Treebeard is one of the big heroes of The Lord of the Rings; he and his buddies completely win the second front of the War of the Ring for the Allies. He’s also a huge fan of Black Oak Arkansas.


Eyeing idle hobbits with bad intent.

Happy Ending: Totally pissed off at the way Saruman – who he thought was his buddy – is treating the forest, Treebeard rouses the Ents and the Huorns (who are like Ents, but with a different name) to go prove his bite is worse than his bark. Get it, because bark is what dog’s do and it’s also… on a… tree. Yeah. I wonder what Treebeard would do if a dog peed on him. Anyway, the Ents fuck up Saruman and Isengard, and it’s implied they’re taking the area over again. Like Detroit.

– Devin Faraci
 
 

3. The Pod People

Exterior: Like Jeff Goldblum, but more attractive.

Interior: Like Jeff Goldblum, but MUCH more attractive.

The Film: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Leafy Truths: Want to know the real reason that actors are willing to sign on to a film where they’ll end up playing emotionless replicas of themselves? Like the rest of us, actors are LAZY. This is an opportunity to go to work and wander around, hitting marks with unaffected listlessness and emoting not at all.

The Root of Evil: Despondency, depression, lack of self-confidence. The pods were perfectly awesome floating space goo — it was GOO THAT COULD LIVE IN SPACE — but no, that wasn’t good enough. Being Leonard Nimoy wasn’t good enough, either. Being the breasts of Brooke Adams is pretty good, though. After that the pods definitely perked up a bit.

Gardening Tips:
Oddly high maintenance. The pods can really adapt to and live anywhere, but they like to be taken care of. The more high-tech facility is available, the better. (Ironically, such areas should remain accessible to even the least-skilled infiltrator. Just for fun.)
 
Its Place in Plantdom:
Debatable. Are the pods just alien magpies, taking over a little leaf space, or are they actually far more ambitious than all the other plants? Is pot actually another alien takeover in waiting, albeit a very, very lazy one? The Dow chemical corporation says yes.
 
Happy Ending: A matter of perspective. The pods win their victory by slow, quiet assimilation. But their victory is a hollow one. First, is this simply the first stage in a recursive cycle in which the pods constantly re-cannibalize each other, eventually devolving a planet full of ropey replicants into the space jizz that opens the movie? Doesn’t matter, becase even if not their victory is reduced to that most awful fate — one inconceivable at the time the film was made: an internet meme.

– Russ Fischer