PRICKLY PEARS AND MARTIAN WEEDS - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 141

sometimes 'neck-high', and 'covered every scrap of unoccupied ground' in and
around the decimated town of Sheen (Wells, [1898] 2009: 150, 167, 168, 203,
205). The narrator comments that he found the red weed 'broadcast throughout
the country, and especially wherever there was a stream of water' (ibid.: 150). This
description of the red weed recalls the prickly pear or Opuntia , a genus of plant in
the cactus family that is native to the American continent, species of which were
deliberately introduced to other hot and dry regions of the globe for ornamental
and economic purposes. By the 1880s and 1890s, the prickly pear had become a
serious pest in eastern Australia, southern Africa, India, and elsewhere, and accounts
of its impact were beginning to be reported in the British scientific press.
The first reference to the prickly pear in Nature appears in the 15 March 1888
issue of the journal in an article by D. Morris entitled 'The Dispersion of Seeds and
Plants'. Morris discusses the spread of seeds from one place to another by way of
the digestive systems of both cattle and human beings, and he records that on the
South Atlantic island of St. Helena it is not possible to use 'urban' manure in the
neighbourhood of Jamestown, because 'if such manure was largely used, the land
would become overrun with plants of the prickly pear, Opuntia ficus-indica , the fruit
of which is largely consumed by the inhabitants' (Morris, 1888: 467). This allusion
to the prickly pear relates in unexpected ways to Wells's representation of the
Martians and their food sources. The advanced Martian invaders themselves have
evolved in such a way that they no longer have digestive systems or the need to
consume solid food; instead, they feed on the blood of the humanoid Martians that
serve as their 'cattle'. So, whether deliberate or accidental, the introduction of the
Martian plants to Earth likely relates to the use of the plants as fodder for these
humanoid Martian 'cattle', a fact that echoes in an unsettling fashion Morris's
discussion of the dispersion of plants by way of both humans and livestock.
Nature also drew attention to accounts of the prickly pear in other prominent
scientific journals of the period, noting discussions of the prickly pear in the Kew
Bulletin in 1888, 1890, and 1892 (Anon, 1888: 277; 1890: 573; 1892: 278). In the
July 1888 issue of the Kew Bulletin , a memorandum from the Director of the
Botanical Gardens at Cape Town, Professor MacOwan, records that in the districts
of Somerset and Graaf-Reinet:
The prickly pear has spread during the last 50 years or so as to become a serious
difficulty. The courses of streams, and flats between their curvatures, have in
many cases been completely over-run, and such places are generally aban-
doned in despair.
(MacOwan, 1888: 166)
MacOwan describes the 'enlargement and increasing denseness' of 'noted thicket[s]'
over the past ten years, and observing that individual landowners had attempted to
'rid themselves of the pest by simply throwing it, by waggon-loads, into the river',
he comments, 'Of course, this simply passes the curse on to somebody unknown,
living down-stream' (ibid.: 166). As will subsequently be shown, such details have