Creating a fictional alien world can be hard. Not only do you have to think about characters and plots, but you also have to create governments, languages, cultures, and, drum roll, flora and fauna. Fortunately, you don’t have to look far to find some alien-looking plants right here on Earth!
Here are nine real-life plants to inspire your science-fiction alien world. This list was inspired by my own weird research and now I pass it on to you.
1. Horned Melon
The horned melon, or kiwano, is native to Sub-Saharan Africa. This plant looks alien from the outside with its orange and red complexion and spikey body, but the weirdness of this plant only increases when you look inside. The fruit’s flesh is lime green with a jelly-like texture. Yet someone cut this thing open and thought, “Yum! Food!”
Apparently, the taste is surprisingly fruity, comparative to a combination of a banana, a cucumber, and a lime. It is now grown around the world for even more people to eat and enjoy its alien-like features.
2. Hydnora Africana
This flower is actually a parasite. It’s called a root parasite, meaning it sucks all its nutrients from neighboring plants through root-like structures. So if the visible flower wasn’t metal enough for you, now you know what’s going on below the surface.
The visible flower has a thick succulent texture with three structures that comprise what looks like an alien mouth. I mean, come on. It even looks like it has teeth. The threads are actually to make it difficult for beetles and other insects to escape once they’ve crawled inside. But just until they pick up the pollen to spread. This isn’t a carnivorous plant like some. It just sucks the nutrients out of its neighboring plants…
3. Thismia neptunis
This plant is so alien that it’s only been discovered three times by humans. It was discovered in 1866 by an Italian botanist, then described in 1878. They actually thought it had gone extinct until it made a surprise appearance in 2017.
It lives almost entirely underground and is another parasitic plant though it feeds off fungi. It doesn’t bloom every year, but when it does, this alien-looking flower appears for a few weeks. Then all visible traces of this plant disappear for another year or two.
4. Trachyandra
This small plant is an alien plant you can grow in your own home. It is a succulent plant that stays relatively small but produces these bright green spindles. As you can see from the spindles, they curve back and forth in a wavy pattern in a definitely unusual way.
While this plant might not feed off others, smell like a rotting corpse, or be super rare, it certainly looks like something out of a science-fiction film.
5. Corpse Flower
Speaking of plants that smell like corpses, the corpse flower grows in the wilds of Indonesia. Yet, despite its smell that people compare to rotting corpses, it is actually on the endangered species list. The “flower” is actually a combination of multiple flowers creating one large flower group. Male and female flowers both make up the inflorescence.
6. Elephant Foot yam
Here’s another weird looking plant that people looked at and decided, “hey that looks edible.” But it’s not the flower shown here that’s edible. It’s actually the tuber underneath. It is grown as a crop in Africa, South Asia, and the tropical Pacific Islands.
The flower has a fairly normal looking base. What makes this look so alien is the bulbous maroon knob that grows in the middle of the flower. It looks like a deflated balloon or something. And apparently, it also smells a little bit like a rotting corpse.
7. Rafflesia
This alien-like plant takes the cake by smelling like a corpse and being parasitic. It has a huge five-petaled flower that’s the only visible thing you can see of it. Of course, it’s not really a flower, but another group of flowers.
Possibly the strangest thing about this plant, other than its look, is the fact it has no roots, no leaves, and no stem. Yet it has the largest flower inflorescence in the world. It is incredibly rare and also on the verge of extinction.
8. Lion’s Mane Mushroom
I love the look of this fungus. It looks like a bunch of tiny stalactites all stacked together. Yet this is not a calcium deposit; it’s a fungus that grows on hardwood trees.
It’s also another plant that a person looked at and thought, “I should put this in my mouth, chew it, and swallow.” And then they didn’t die. The lion’s mane mushroom is actually edible! It also has a bunch of medicinal properties too.
9. Octopus Stinkhorn
I’ve saved my favorite for the last because seriously, this plant is the most alien-looking thing I’ve seen in my life. Are we sure this isn’t scientific proof aliens have visited us? This plant is a fungus that starts as a white egg shape which then erupts with slender tentacle-like arms that smell like putrid flesh.
You can’t make this stuff up.
Well, you can, but you should definitely take some inspiration from the Octopus stinkhorn. It pollinates using flies which is why it is thought to smell like rotting flesh. The arms also add to the rotting flesh disguise in both color and texture.
If these don’t inspire you to create some awesome fauna for your alien world, then you better go back to bed and sleep off your writer’s block. Of course, not all your plants should be parasitic and smell like corpses unless you create some cool cannibalistic world that smells like actual death. That also works.
What weird research have you done as a writer? Comment below and you might see it in my next weird research post!