What do you mean this isn't what you meant by "hair roots"?
Whenever Plant People show up, they are almost guaranteed to have Plant Hair.
Plant Hair is when a character, usually a plant, has leaves, vines, flowers, and other foliage-related paraphernalia instead of hair.
This can be a Justified Trope because having leaves on top of your head makes them less concealed from the sun, so photosynthesis is easier. Although most of the time it just looks good. That doesn't excuse Humans with Plant Hair, when the Plant People look exactly like humans, except for their Plant Hair.
Note that the character in question doesn't have to be a plant. They just have to have foliage-related stuff instead of hair.
Compare Robot Hair and Alien Hair. See also Plant Person, Plant Aliens, and Planimal, who probably have this. Sometimes occurs in Weird Beard form.
Is a Elemental Hair Composition as hair that isn't actually "hair".
Examples
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Anime & Manga
- Delicious in Dungeon has piscine-type merfolk who attach water plants to their heads to store their eggs.
- Doraemon: Nobita and the Green Giant Legend re-introduces Kibō, a former sapling given life by Doraemon's growth potion into a humanoid form, with leaves in place of hair. When Kibō and the gang reaches the Green Planet, inhabited entirely by Plant Aliens, they encounter a friendly underground tribe whose hair is made of moss.
- In Digimon Adventure, Palmon's Ultimate digivolution, Lillymon, has vines growing out from under her flower-like hat that look like hair.
- Monster Musume: Kii, the dryad, has a full head of leaves.
- My Hero Academia: Ibara Shiozaki has the Quirk "Vines", which manifests as her hair being thorny vines. She can control it at will, use it to restrain enemies, and detach it to form walls of vines. It also only needs water and sun to grow back, so she doesn't need to worry about getting bald.
Asian Animation
- Dhokla from Simple Samosa has a big leaf of coriander for hair. Justified as real-life dishes of dhokla (an Indian food) are usually garnished with coriander. At the end of the episode "Hair Today Gone Tomorrow", Dhokla tries a multitude of other plant hair styles, including some especially silly ones like a pineapple and a venus flytrap.
Comic Books
- The DCU:
- Batman: Poison Ivy usually has long red hair, but Tim Sale draws her with masses of ivy vines instead of hair.
- Green Lantern: The Green Lantern of Sector 586, Medphyll, is from a species of one-eyed humanoid Plant Aliens who have a mass of leaf covered vines in place of hair.
- Swamp Thing: Jason Woodrue, a.k.a. the Floronic Man, has leaves instead of hair ever since his transformation into a Plant Person.
- In Wonder Woman (1942) the Rykornian Plant Aliens' "hair" is very clearly based on corn-silk.
- In Wonder Woman (2011) Demeter's "hair" appears to actually be leaves.
Folklore and Mythology
- In the Welsh mythological cycle, The Mabinogion, the perfect woman Blodeuwedd is created from the flowers and growing things of the earth: her hair is effectively made of flowers. Later, for her sins and heartlessness, she is turned into the first owl and fated to haunt the night—the flowers that became human hair now mutate into feathers.
Literature
- In The Book of the New Sun, Severian goes sees a festival sideshow that supposedly has a future-telling plant man. Much to Severian's surprise, there is a indeed a Green Man. After a moment of silence Severian tries to get the conversation started, by mentioning he always imagined that a plant-man would have grass-like hair. The Green Man finally talks, correcting Severian that he is not a plant.
- City of Glass: When Helen Blackthorn is first introduced as a background character, her hair is described as being made of flowers.
- Discworld: Trolls, being made of rock, often cultivate lichen on their heads.
- The Lord of the Rings: Both the original book and the film adaptation describe Ents, the tree-people, as having foliage reminiscent of hair on less cellulose-based humanoids. Treebeard is a nickname given to one of them because of the beard-like moss on his face.
- Treasure In The Heart Of The Tanglewood: Hannah has flowers and vines growing from her scalp amidst her normal human hair. As a magician, they come in handy for using in potions, but they're also a clue to her mysterious origin as a demigoddess daughter of the local Mother Nature.
Live-Action TV
- Doctor Who: In "The End of the World", Jabe of the Forests of Cheem is a walking tree. She has a thick lump of branches instead of hair, with flowers sticking out of them. She's also proudly displaying those Non-Mammal Mammaries.
- Saturday Night Live had a sketch recommending chia hair for people suffering from hair loss. Hilarious in Hindsight now that chia seeds are being sold as a nutritional supplement that allegedly promotes hair growth.
- Sigmund and the Sea Monsters has lots of seaweed on his squidlike head, as do his parents, Big Daddy Ooze and Sweet Mama Ooze, as well as his brothers, Blurp and Slurp. The styles and colors vary, but kelp-based pseudo-hair is a constant among sea monsters.
Tabletop Games
- Arduin: Perrinites are a crossbreed between elves and dryads that have plants and flowers where their hair should be.
- Exalted: High levels of wood elemental corruption often result in this, and it's very common for people living in the deep forests of the East, where Creation approaches the Elemental Pole of Wood, to have leaves, moss or small vines instead of hair.
Video Games
- Goosebumps: Night of Scares: Dr. Brewer's plant-clone has a Beard of Evil made of wood.
- Guild Wars 2: The Sylvari have leaves and vines instead of hair. They are sometimes Humans with Plant Hair, because some people make their Sylvari look more like an elf than a plant.
- The Heart Pumps Clay: The Dryad,
◊ based on mythological Greek tree spirits, has a leaf for hair, implying that she's a Plant Person.
- The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask:
- When in Deku form, Link has yellow leaves reminiscent of his bangs.
- The Deku Princess has a long plant ponytail, while the Deku Butler has a curly leaf mustache.
- Cetrion, the Elder Goddess of Nature, Light, and Virtue in Mortal Kombat 11, has large green leaves growing from her head, giving her an Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance.
- Shantae and the Seven Sirens: Water Lily Siren has a rose flower on her head, along with leaves and spiked root-like structures, which seems to be her hair.
- In The Sims 2 Seasons Expansion Pack, Sims have the potential to be transformed into Plant Sims, which in their adult state have green leaves for hair, or a large flower for toddlers. Plant Sims are also included in the University Life expansion of The Sims 3 as well as the stuff pack Cool Kitchen Stuff in The Sims 4.
- Starbound: The Florans, vicious and cannibalistic Plant Aliens, have Plant Hair. In fact they have all the kinds of Plant Hair mentioned in the article, including venus flytraps on their heads, to give more character creation options to people playing as them.
- Skully has the earth elemental, Terry, who has hair made of leaves and grass for beard. The titular skull can also access golem forms, two with plant hair - the Strong Silent has grass growing on it's head, while the Jolly Jumper has antler-like horns filled with scraggly vine.
- In Super Mario Sunshine, the piantas have palm trees on their heads.
- The Trader of Stories: The younger trees have leaves that serve as hair and clothes (even serving as the botanical equivalent of a Fur Bikini on one of them).
- Warcraft III: Treant buildings have long flowing beards and hair made of leaves, which is most noticeable on the Ancient Protector (who even has birds living in it).
- In WildStar, there's the Granok, giant bipedal living stone creatures. Some of the options when creating a Granok include a plant beehive,◊ plant afro,◊ and plant◊ mosstache.
- In the World of Mana series, the Wood elemental Dryad is commonly depicted with a green, wild ponytail◊ that amplifies her appearance of a palm tree.
Visual Novels
- In Sable's Grimoire, Eth the mandragora has leafy green vines and large pink flower petals for hair.
Webcomics
- Huckleberry's eponymous protagonist is a Plant Person with a full head of leaves. They occasionally molt like feathers.
Western Animation
- Ben 10: Omniverse: Gwen 10's Wildvine form has two bulbs on the sides of her head that look like Princess Leia-esque hair buns.
- Darkwing Duck: The plant-themed villain Bushroot has a large tuft of flower-like foliage instead of hair.
