PRICKLY PEARS AND MARTIAN WEEDS - Rethinking Invasion Ecologies from the Environmental Humanities - page 144

due not to any measures taken by human beings against it but rather to the effects
of 'a cankering disease' caused by terrestrial bacteria (ibid.: 171). This pattern of
initial rapid spread followed by sharp decline, coupled with the lack of deliberate
human involvement in the eradication of these plants, one actual, one fictional, is
a significant point of similarity, for in The War of the Worlds Wells is keen to stress
human beings' lack of agency in the face of even a plant pest.
Based on these multiple resemblances, the Martian red weed is a very strange
plant indeed: an aquatic cactus, a terrestrial waterweed. Wells had an education in
biology; he could be careless of details at times, but he would not have been
unaware of the implausibility of his hybrid plant in an earthly context. The red
weed is a deliberate fictional hybrid, drawing features from at least two identifiable
species that had become nuisances when introduced to new environments.
The scientific rationale behind this hybrid plant is made clearer in an essay, 'The
Things that Live on Mars', that Wells published in Cosmopolitan Magazine in March
1908, in which he explains his conception of Martian flora and fauna, 'developed
in conformity with the very latest astronomical revelations' (Wells, [1908] 1993:
298). Recognising that Mars has less moisture than Earth, 'for we hardly ever see
thick clouds there, and rain must be infrequent', Wells posits that '[s]ince the great
danger for a plant in a dry air is desiccation, we may expect these Martian leaves
to have thick cuticles, just as the cactus has' (ibid.: 300). Further speculating that
'moisture will come to the Martian plant mainly from . . . seasonal floods from the
melting of the snow-caps', he reasons that the plants will be adapted to take
advantage of the brief opportunity for growth offered by such seasonal flooding
(ibid.: 300). Aware that in a low-gravity environment, thick stalks or trunks would
not be needed to support the leaves and flowers of a plant, he argues that 'the typical
Martian plant will probably be tall' and carry its cactus-like pads upon 'uplifting
reedy stalks' (ibid.: 300). These 'fleshy, rather formless' yet 'slender, stalky' plants
recall both the prickly pear and the waterweed and are at once contradictory and
plausible creations (ibid.: 301). The adaptations that suit a Martian plant to its native
environment give it an unlikely appearance by earthly standards and endow it with
attributes and habits that cause it to become a rapidly spreading pest species when
introduced to Earth.
However, if Wells's 1908 article elucidates the scientific rationale behind the
appearance and behaviour of the red weed on both Mars and Earth, there is also
an artistic justification for the composite nature of his alien plant, for the process
of fictional hybridisation that Wells engaged in when creating the red weed also
contributes in crucial ways to the overall impression left by this Martian organism.
The Martian weed that Wells describes in his novel is an uncanny organism, an
amalgam of familiar features that, taken together, form an unfamiliar species. Its
otherworldly character is signalled not only by its red colouring but also by its
contradictory appearance and habits, its cactus-like branches and Titanic water
fronds, its spread over both land and water. How better to create an unsettling,
destabilising sense of the unhomely or alien than by combining recognisable
features and habits of widely different species in one impossible plant? In imagining