Well here comes another missive from the Naperville manager. I always have trouble trying to figure out what to write. This idea came from a little elderly lady I overheard while waiting at the eye doctor. Her husband was complaining about the rain we’ve lately and she gives him the old adage “April showers bring May flowers”. As adorable as that sounded, it hit me right away to write about plant based characters in comics. I started to do some research and boy was floored by how many plant characters were in comics. I could go in depth with this but no one what to read a research paper like I used to do in college. Plus my creativity is not as alcohol fueled as it was back then. I am going to delve into some of the characters I found interesting as I did my thing. I’ll break them up by company and some different media. I hope this one will grow on you.
We can start off with the Marvel comics plant characters. The couple you would know right off the bat are Man-Thing and Groot. They have both had many of their own books so I would like to list a few that II found interesting during research.
-PLANTMAN- He was a botanist who created a device that could communicate with plants. After lightning hit his device (as it does), it gave it the power to manipulate and animate plants. So what does he do, he creates plant creatures so he can rob banks. He goes through many mishaps even becoming a giant plant that attacks Los Angeles. There is another one who is just a loser who got plant powers from the Power Broker (yawn).
-The Inhumans have quite a few plant-powered characters. First is Rootar. He looks like a beefy Groot and his power is finger tendrils. Then there is Timberius who is a hybrid who can create wild rapid growth in any plant he touches. Johan is another who just has plant manipulation. There is Ajay Roy who was a human who got exposed to the Terrigen and got a wooden form. Lastly is Shredded Man who can communicate and manipulate plants on a global scale.
-Sssessthugar was a leader of the hostile oak-like creatures known as the Hylthri. They were native of K’un-Lun. The human residents chased them off so they can take over. Later Sssessthugar came back with Plantman (the real one). He used his powers to take over Wolverine to do his bidding. Wolverine broke the control and kill him and the remaining race. A sad end.
-The Cotati are a plant race that evolved on Hala with the Kree. The Cotati were a peaceful race and the Kree were not. When the Skrulls offered a contest to see who gets their technology, the Cotati won be creating a dazzling garden. The Kree did not like this a slaughtered them. They hid for centuries until Mantis became their Celestial Madonna. She had a child with the possessed dead body of the Swordsman (yeah kind of weird). He was the Celestial Messiah. The Cotati tried to wipe out all animal life but was beaten by a confederation of Avengers, Fantastic Four, Kree and Skrulls. They were sent to a far-off planet where they can live their lives in peace.
That was just a sampling of some of the plant characters in the Marvel universe. Now on to the DC universe. The two biggest ones for DC are Swamp Thing and Poison Ivy. Everyone knows them so I do not have to bother with them. Yet there are a lot to choose from.
-Mentioning Swamp Thing there are a bunch of characters that came from that book. To start off with the Floronic Man who has ties to both Swamp Thing and Poison Ivy. Heck, he had a hand in Ivy’s creation. Jason Woodrue changed himself into a plant and in an attempt to connect himself to the Green, he drove himself mad. He is a connection to a lot of the DC plant based characters. There is also Lady Weeds who was the avatar for the Green during Victorian times. The thing that interested me about her was that to prove her worth to the Parliament of Trees, she caused the Great Potato Famine in Ireland. 
There is Tefe who is the Daughter and successor of Swamp Thing. She can control both plants and animals. There are so many plant characters that came from the Swamp Thing book but one of my favorites is Kudzu. A feudal Japanese samurai who was hung out to die on vines made a pact with nature. He is now nature’s assassin. He was killed by one of his assignments, Tefe.
-One I forget about often is Solomon Grundy. He was originally killed and dumped in a Gotham swamp. When he is resurrected decades later, he is a mixture of flesh and swamp vegetation. 
The interesting thing about Solomon is that you never know what kind of man he will be when he is resurrected time after time. He could docile or a calculating criminal mastermind. Who knows maybe it is the plants.
-There are a couple from Legion of Super-Heroes. There is Chlorophyll Kid who can stimulate plant growth. He is a founding member of the Legion Substitute Heroes. Then a short lived one who was Plant Kid. He could change into any plant.
-Independent comics have a plethora of plant characters yet none of them as important as the two major ones but I did find a few. To start with there is the Heap who inspired Swamp Thing and Man-Thing. He was in the 40s Airboy comics and revived in the mid-80s. There is Barque who is a talking tree in I Hate Fairyland. Irving the Living Cactus is from Savage Dragon. There is adorable Pumpkin who was created by Steven Universe. There is the Transformer Botanica for Transformers Beast Machines who changes into a sentient plant instead of an animal. Tumbleweed from Wildstorm who is a tangle of desert fauna. These are just a few.
I also mentioned other media earlier. There are cartoons with plenty of plant based characters. Masters of the Universe had Moss Man and Evilseed. Inhumanoids had Tendril. Darkwing Duck had half duck half plant, Bushroot. My personal favorite is Banana Joe from the Amazing World of Gumball.
In other media like video games and card games, there is a whole type called Grass type Pokemon. Some of them are Bulbasaur, Weepinbell, Exeggcute, and Leafeon just to name a few.
This was quite the adventure. You could easily go down quite the deep rabbit hole just investigating either Marvel or DC plant characters. Like II always say in these, I know for a fact I missed quite a few characters but there is always next time. We’ll see what catches my attention next time. Again, thank you for reading my ramblings.
Mike