The Beasts that Hide from Man (15 page)
Read The Beasts that Hide from Man Online
Authors: Karl P.N. Shuker
Perhaps the most incredible case on file is one that first came to Western attention via an extraordinary letter received in 1878 by Polish biologist Dr. Omelius Fredlowski. According to the letter’s contents, at least one Western explorer claimed to have witnessed an all-too-real, fatal encounter with a rapacious botanical monster that would put even the worst excesses of Audrey II to shame!
The letter was from Carl Liehe, a German explorer who had been visiting a primitive tribe called the Mkodos on the African island of Madagascar. While there, he and a fellow Westerner called Hendrick were shown a grotesque tree, to which humans were sacrificed:
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, a dark dingy brown, and apparently as hard as iron. From the apex of this truncated cone eight leaves hung sheer to the ground. These leaves were about 11 or 12 ft long, tapering to a sharp point that looked like a cow’s horn, and with a concave face thickly set with strong thorny hooks. The apex of the cone was a round white concave figure like a smaller plate set within a larger 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 and soporific properties. From underneath the rim of the undermost plate a series of long hairy green tendrils stretched out in every direction. These were 7 or 8 ft long. Above these, six white almost transparent palpi [tentacles] reared themselves toward the sky, twirling and twisting with a marvellous incessant motion. Thin as reeds, apparently they were yet 5 or 6 ft tall.
Suddenly, after a shrieking session of prayers to this sinister tree, the natives encircled one of the women in their tribe, and forced her with their spears to climb its trunk, until at last she stood at its summit, surrounded by its tentacle-like palpi dancing like snakes on all sides. The natives told the doomed woman to drink, so she bent down and drank the treacle-like fluid filling the tree’s uppermost plate, and became wild with hysterical frenzy:
But she did not jump down, as she seemed to intend to do. Oh no! The atrocious cannibal tree that had been so inert and dead came to sudden savage life. The slender delicate palpi, with the fury of starved serpents, quivered a moment over her head, then fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms; then while her awful screams and yet more awful laughter rose wildly to be instantly strangled down again into a gurgling moan, the tendrils one after another, like 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 the savage tenacity of anacondas fastening upon their prey. And now the great leaves slowly rose and stiffly erected themselves in the air, approached one another and closed about the dead and hampered victim with the silent force of a hydraulic press and the ruthless purpose of a thumb screw.
While I could see the bases of these great levers pressing more tightly towards each other, from their interstices there trickled down the stalk of the tree great streams of the viscid honeylike fluid mingled horribly with the blood and oozing viscera of the victim. At the sight of this the savage hordes around me, yelling madly, bounded forward, crowded to the tree, clasped it, and with cups, leaves, hands and tongues each obtained enough of the liquor to send him mad and frantic. Then ensued a grotesque and indescribably hideous orgy. May I never see such a sight again.
The retracted leaves of the great tree kept their upright position during ten days, then when I came one morning they were prone again, the tendrils stretched, the palpi floating, and nothing but a white skull at the foot of the tree to remind me of the sacrifice that had taken place there.
Liehe was not the only visitor to Madagascar to learn of this nightmarish species. Chase Salmon Osborn, governor of Michigan from 1911 through 1913, journeyed to Madagascar during the early 1920s in the hope of seeing for himself the terrible tree. Sadly for science (but perhaps fortunately for him!), he did not succeed in locating one, but he discovered that it was well known to natives all over the island, and even some of the Western missionaries working there believed in its existence. He also learned that from the very earliest times Madagascar had been known as “the land of the man-eating tree.”
Nevertheless, there is much to doubt in Liche’s testimony regarding this herbaceous horror—not least of which is whether Liehe himself ever existed! Eminent biochemist and cryptozoologist Dr. Roy R Mackal, now retired from the University of Chicago, devoted an entire chapter to the Madagascan man-eating tree in his book
Searching For Hidden Animals
(1980), but was unable to discover any background history concerning Liehe, and even the original publication source of Liche’s letter remains a mystery.
No less controversial is the morphology of the man-eating tree, for Liche’s description brings together an extraordinary (and highly unlikely) collection of specialized structural features seemingly drawn from several wholly different, unrelated groups of plants. As Mackal justifiably pointed out, such an amazing combination of characteristics could not reasonably be the outcome of effective evolutionary adaptation. Moreover, its ever-animate, writhing palpi are unlike any structure ever reported from
any
known species of plant.
Consequently, Mackal dismissed the existence of Madagascar’s man-eating tree, at least in the form attributed to it by Liehe. However, as he noted when concluding his chapter dealing with this lethal entity, Liche’s description may be a highly embellished, exaggerated account of a real but smaller, less dramatic species of carnivorous plant native to Madagascar. Certainly, any region of the world that has offered up for scientific scrutiny as many truly unique, endemic species as this veritable island continent has must surely retain the potential for concealing some major biological surprises even today.
Indeed, there may even be some photographic evidence for the existence of such a plant. Czech explorer Ivan Mackerle is probably best known in cryptozoological circles as the most famous modern-day seeker of the Mongolian death worm (see Chapter 2). However, he also has a longstanding interest in stories of mysterious flesh-eating flora, and in 1998 he led a month-long expedition to Madagascar in order to investigate reports of the man-eating tree, which he refers to as the
tepe
. Moreover, in a letter to me concerning this, Ivan included a truly tantalizing snippet of information of which I was not previously aware.
In 1935, a former British army officer called L. Hearst apparently spent four months in Madagascar, and while there he took photographs of some unknown species of tree under which lay the skeletons of various sizeable animals. According to Ivan, these photos were later published somewhere, but he has been unable to find out where. Some scientists who saw the photos claimed that they were fakes, so Hearst returned to Madagascar to obtain more convincing proof, but died in mysterious circumstances. This, at least, is the story that Ivan has pieced together, but he has been unable as yet to provide conclusive corroboration for it. So if anyone reading this book has any relevant information, or knows where the tree photos were published, Fd be very interest ed to receive details. As for Ivan’s own Madagascar expedition, he was unable to uncover any evidence in support of Liche’s claims. In a letter to me of September 21,1998, Ivan wrote:
We had taken a Malagasy guide and interpreter with us, who lives in Prague and knows Czech. And so we could speak with the natives about mysteries. We had travelled all over the country, mainly in the south region. It is interesting, but no-one had known anything about the man-eat ing tree. Neither people in town (botanists, jour nalists, etc) nor natives. They had heard only about pitcher plants. Natives know killer trees but no man-eating ones. The story of Karl [sic] Liehe is unknown there. We spoke with many botanists. I could not believe it, because I had supposed that it was a widespread legend there. But killer trees are also very interesting. Many of them are little-known or unknown to science. We found the killer tree ‘kumanga’, which is poison ous when it has flowers. We took gas-masks for protecting ourselves, but the tree did not blossom at that time. We had seen a skeleton of a dead bird and a dead turtle [tortoise] under the tree. The tree grows only in one place in Madagascar and it is rare today. It was difficult to find it.
So it would appear that even though the man-eating tree is non-existent, Madagascar can still tantalize mainstream botany, courtesy of the
kumanga
killer tree. As Ivan’s team encountered it, this mystifying species clearly exists—but what can it be, and is it truly capable of achieving the lethal effects claimed by the local people? Mindful that a number of harmless plants on Madagascar have been accredited with all manner of sinister talents in Malagasy folklore, it would hardly be surprising or unprecedented if the
kumanga s
deadly tendencies owe more to imaginative fiction than biological fact. Conversely, I have so far been unable to determine the
kumanga s
taxonomie identity—could it therefore be unknown to science, echoing Ivan’s above-quoted words? There are evidently some notable mysteries of the cryptobotanical kind still awaiting resolution on the exotic island of Madagascar.
Moreover, in a highly unexpected twist to the long-running saga of Madagascar’s putative man-eating tree, Canadian researcher W. Ritchie Benedict revealed in 1995 that he had uncovered a published but hitherto-unpublicized newspaper account
(The Watchman
, New Brunswick, May 29,1995) regarding this cryptobotanical wonder dating back to 1875 (hence predating the Liehe letter by three years), and which indicates an origin for it not in Madagascar but in New Guinea! How ironic it would be if the reason why the greatest mystery plant of all time has never been scientifically exposed is that everyone has been looking for it on the wrong island!
YA-TE-VEO
TREE AND BRAZIL’S DEVIL TREE
A similar carnivorous plant to Madagascar’s supposed man-eating tree, and also currently undiscovered, is said to exist in parts of Central America. In
Sea and Land
(1887), J.W. Buel called it the
ya-te-veo
tree, and described it as having a short, thick trunk with immense spine-like shoots at its summit that bear dagger-like thorns along their edges. These shoots hang down to the ground, and appear lifeless—until an unwary person walks between them, toward the trunk itself. Then, without warning, the shoots rise up and entwine themselves around him, pressing him onto the trunk’s surface, upon which they instantly impale him with their long thorns and crush him until his body is drained with blood, which is rapidly absorbed through the tree’s surface. Once again, however, the inordinate motility of this plant’s shoots poses a major dilemma when attempting to assess its credibility.
Equally problematic is the Brazilian devil tree, alluded to by Harold T. Wilkins in
Secret Cities of Old South America
(1952) and also termed the octopod tree. Native to the Mato Grosso, it is said to be as big as a willow, but hides its branches deep in the earth or the surrounding undergrowth. Should anything (or anyone) go near to it or trip over its concealed branches, however, this diabolical plant will stealthily draw them out from under the soil or bushes and snare its unwary victim in the grip of their ever-tightening tendrils.
During the summer of 1932, Captain Thomas W.H. Sarll from Middlesex in England set off for the Amazon on a courageous quest to locate, uproot, and return home to England with a living octopod tree. As nothing was heard of his expedition’s outcome, however, we can only assume that it did not accomplish its bold objective.
The following item appeared in the column “Science Jottings” by naturalist Dr. Andrew Wilson for the
Illustrated London News
on August 27,1892:
I have lately met with the description of a very singular plant, given originally, I believe, in a provincial newspaper…It appears that a naturalist, a Mr. Dunstan by name, was botanising in one of the swamps surrounding the Nicaragua Lake. The account goes on to relate that “while hunting for specimens he heard his dog cry out, as if in agony, from a distance. Running to the spot whence the animal’s cries came, Mr. Dunstan found him enveloped in a perfect network of what seemed to be a fine, rope-like tissue of roots and fibres. The plant or vine seemed composed entirely of bare, interlacing stems, resembling more than anything else the branches of a weeping willow denuded of its foliage, but of a dark, nearly black hue, and covered with a thick, viscid gum that exuded from the pores. Drawing his knife, Mr. Dunstan attempted to cut the poor beast free, but it was with the very greatest difficulty that he managed to sever the fleshy muscular fibres [sic] of the plant. When the dog was extricated from the coils of the plant, Mr. Dunstan saw to his horror that its body was bloodstained, while the skin appeared to be actually sucked or puckered in spots, and the animal staggered as if from exhaustion. In cutting the vine the twigs curled like living, sinuous fingers about Mr. Dunstan’s hand, and it required no slight force to free the member from their clinging grasp, which left the flesh red and blistered. The tree, it seems, is well known to the natives, who relate many stories of its death-dealing powers. Its appetite is voracious and insatiable, and in five minutes it will suck the nourishment from a large lump of meat, rejecting the carcass [sic] as a spider does that of a used-up fly/’ This is a very circumstantial account of the incident, but in such tales it is, of course, absurd “to leave such a matter to a doubt.” If correct, it is very clear we have yet to add a very notable example to the list of plants which demand an animal dietary as a condition of their existence; and our sundews, Venus flytraps, and pitcher plants will then have to “pale their ineffectual fires” before the big devourer of the Nicaragua swamps.
