Green Thumb

You don't want this girl to send you flowers.

Ysengrin: You should admire this body Lord Coyote has gifted me with, Renard. Now the very trees of Gillitie are under my command!
Reynardine: I tremble in the presence of your terrifying skills of gardening, Ysengrin.

— Gunnerkrigg Court, "The Fangs of Summertime"

The power of supernatural control of plants (and usually fungi, too) via Super Powers, Applied Phlebotinum or magic. People with this can essentially make plants grow, make them move around like animals, create vines from the earth, summon poison ivy, sic trees on you, and so on. A notable term for this kind of power is "chlorokinesis" (especially when considering the fact that one of its etymological roots "chloro-" literally means green).

Sometimes mocked as What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?; even if the character is very powerful, expect wisecracks about their superpower being "gardening". Writers often go out of their way to disprove these assumptions through displays of great power from plant-based characters. Hit the Berserk Button of someone with a Green Thumb and you can find yourself in a full-blown Garden of Evil surrounded by Plant Mooks.

May be paired with Petal Power and Fertile Feet. Their ability may extend to manipulating Fantastic Flora, if the setting has any. May involve Talking to Plants. Often overlaps with Reed Richards Is Useless, since it seldom occurs to them to grow fruits, vegetables, or grains for the hungry or reverse the effects of deforestation. Though sometimes it's given an explantation that it's not practical to do so for reasons such as the character can't grow plants over a wide area, it risks exhausting the soil, or it's Cast from Hit Points or Cast from Lifespan. Symbol Motif Clothing can be involved if the wearer has several plant shapes on their clothing or, heck, if they're wearing plants in the form of a Garden Garment. Their blood is likely to be Fertile Blood.

Plant Persons, Nature Spirits, and nymphs all commonly display these powers. An especially powerful Green Thumb allows a character to create a World-Healing Wave. Sometimes classified as one of the Elemental Powers, often as a subset of the "Earth" element in western works, or go standalone or with "Wind" element in eastern works. If called "Nature", then Nature Equals Plants is in play.

Not to be confused with Caring Gardener, though can easily go hand-in-hand. Compare Friend to All Living Things. Compare Biomanipulation, the power to control and manipulate flesh, and The Beastmaster and Fluffy Tamer, abilities to control animals/beasts.

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Example Subpages:

• Video Games

Other Examples:

Anime & Manga

• From Black Clover, Mimosa Vermillion's Plant Magic involves the manipulation of plant life. She can even make large plants grow inside a long-abandoned ruin. She uses them to heal herself and others in addition to making maps of a dungeon, making her a vital source of navigation through the otherwise hazardous area. After training to become stronger, she can even form a flower cannon that shoots mana beams.
• Bungo Stray Dogs has John Steinbeck with his ability, The Grapes of Wrath, which allows him to grow grapevines out of his body and graft them onto other plants in the area so he can control them too.
• Hikari of Castle Town Dandelion has this as one application of her Royalty Superpower. God's Hand allows her to manipulate the growth of any living thing, with the caveat that when so affected, it's stuck that way for twenty-four hours. In practice, she just uses this to age her body up to adulthood and mess with Akane.
• In Darwin's Game, the player known as The Florist has the power to control plants to such a degree he can use them to synthesise drugs with which to Mind Control people. When personally confronted, he was able to craft a bulletproof, strength-enhancing suit of wooden armor that gave the protagonist trouble.
• Day Break Illusion: Luna can create magical vines. Meanwhile, Akari's association with The Sun causes plants near her to grow very quickly.
• Fairy Tail:
  • Minor Fairy Tail member Droy uses Plant Magic, which allows him to grow and control weaponized plants from magic seeds.
  • Warrod Seeken, the 4th ranked Wizard Saint, possesses Green Magic, which he uses to halt the spread of deserts as a hobby.
  • Also earlier in the series, we meet Azuma, one of Grimoire Heart's Seven Kin of Purgatory, whose Arboreal Arc magic is a combination of this trope and Having a Blast. After he's fatally injured, he turns into a tree from overusing its power.
  • One of the most powerful executioners of the Fiore kingdom, Cosmos, is specialized in the evocation of giant carnivorous and poisonous flowers and plants. She is also able to materialize a spy flower miles away.
  • Arc Villain Mard Geer's Thorn Curse lets him grow giant thorns and demonic flowers.
  • Beating out all of them in Fairy Tail: 100 Years Quest is the Wood Dragon God Aldoron, a massive dragon who can create trees that dwarf mountains, fire massive wooden spikes the size of cities, unleash a hailstorm of wooden spikes like a rain of death, create Plant Mooks and fire-resistant razor leaves and plants, and can forcibly drain the lifeforce of anything that remains on his body long enough to heal and strengthen himself.
• Mokuren Nagai from Flame of Recca, who later turns into a plant man himself, and he uses his 'roots' for...interesting, but nasty things.
• Fullmetal Alchemist (2003): Russel and Fletcher Tringham tend to utilize alchemy involving plants.
• Hello! Sandybell:
  • Sandybell is a Nature Lover, and works for the Countess by tending to the Wellington's garden. Charles, George and David at one point try to upset her by sabotaging it, but Mark comes to her rescue and gives them all a good beating.
  • One of the things Catherine and Ricky do while out is tend to a garden.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure:
  • Stardust Crusaders: Holy Kujo's Stand takes the form of vines growing out of her body. While Holy lacks the fighting spirit needed to control a Stand, it presumably would have this power had she been able to use it.
  • Golden Wind: Giorno Giovanna's Stand, Gold Experience, allows him to give life to inanimate objects, which just happens to include the creation of plants... plants that will hurt you if you swing at them.
  • Stone Ocean: Something has this power, causing all the dead prisoners in the punishment block to erupt into woody vines that flex and shift to move DIO's Bone around and gestate the Green Baby as a seed. It's not made clear exactly who or what caused it; whether it was an aftereffect of Limp Bizkit, some property of DIO's Bone, some combination of the above, or something else entirely.
• The Law of Ueki: Ueki can create trees from trash and use said trees as weapons or implements. He also likes nature, especially plants.
• Lyrical Nanoha:
  • Magical Record Lyrical Nanoha Force introduces the Briar Rose spell to the franchise, which allows the user to summon and control an Anti-Magic version of the The Hedge of Thorns.
  • Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha A's: The Book of Darkness' power going out of control is usually represented by it creating plant growth (tree roots for the flashback to Clyde's death and thorny vines for when it absorbed the Wolkenritter in the movie adaptation). Consequently, Yuri was give plant-based abilities in the Reflection/Detonation duology to reflect the fact that she was a part of the book in that continuity. It even plays a major role in her backstory working with Eltria's Planet Restoration Committee.
• Magi: Labyrinth of Magic: Hakuryuu gets these kinds of power once he acquires the Earth Djinn, Zagan's powers. The abilities are quite versatile too, varying from controlling plants to making his own earth creatures that he can command.
• Mon Colle Knights: Utahime/Kahimi can summon giant vines and control the lifeforce of any plant through song.
• Kinoko Komori aka Shemage in My Hero Academia can produce spores from her body to instantly grow hundreds of mushrooms.
• Naruto:
  • The Wood Style/Mokuton Kekkei Genkai gives its wielder the ability to create wood from some strange fusion of Earth and Water jutsus and allows full control of all wooden entities as well as the ability to suppress a Tailed Beast's chakra (possibly a reference to how trees were often used to contain monsters in Japanese mythology). Only one person was ever able to use it naturally: Hashirama Senju, the First Hokage, and because of this, others need his DNA implanted in them to use it as well, making the only known users early on him and Yamato (who had Hashirama's DNA implanted into him by Orochimaru at a young age, a process that killed the other 39 subjects due to them losing control of the cells and being turned into trees in the process). Other users include Danzo Shimura, Obito Uchiha, and Madara Uchiha, who also spliced his DNA into themselves, and the White Zetsu and Tobi/Spiral Zetsu, who were created with it.
  • The purified chakra of Kurama acts somewhat like this. Even the chakra-fueled wood of Wood Style blossoms into leaf in its presence. This was then weaponized when Naruto discovered the chakra could forcibly transform other White Zetsus into trees.
  • In the sequel series Boruto, Moegi Kazamatsuri, Konohamaru Sarutobi's former teammate and the current leader of Team 10, rather mysteriously gains the ability to use Wood Style. What causes this is unknown, as she has no known connection to Hashirama or the Senju clan.
• Shirabe of Negima! Magister Negi Magi has some mysterious blood-line trait allowing her to grow and control vines anywhere she feels. So far, it's been used as a villainous example of a Worf Barrage in her attempt to taunt, bait, and defeat Kotarō.
• Kakeru Yuiga from Norn9 has the ability to make any plant, flower, or tree grow at his command.
• One Piece:
  • During the two-year Time Skip, Usopp learns how to fire a variety of special seeds called "Pop Greens", with a specific seed serving a certain function.
  • The anime-only villain Bins from the twelfth movie ‘’One Piece Film: Z'' ate the Mosa Mosa no Mi, which allows him to grow plants at a ludicrous speed and control them.
  • Admiral Ryokugyu, aka Aramaki, ate the Woods-Woods Fruit, a Logia-class Devil Fruit that grants him control over plant life. It allows him to wrap up and drain his enemies with Combat Tentacles, fly around on a helicopter rotor made out of large leaves, and it has helped him survive for years without eating any solid food, via photosynthesis and nutrient absorption. He also possesses the ability to spread plant life just by walking through an area, leaving behind beautiful scenery. How much of this was conscious on his part is unclear, but he certainly uses the newly made lush terrain in battle.
• Pokémon Adventures: Courtney is an interesting variation as she doesn't have superpowers; she instead uses berry juice, tree sap, and acid for a variety of purposes including burning someone's eyes, glue, melting, and so on. Her knowledge of plants likely comes from the fact that she used to participate in contests, where understanding the properties of berries for special diets is critical.
• Prétear: Shin, the Knight of Plants (and Himeno, when she "merges" with him). For the record, he is the weakest of the seven Leafe Knights, but this has more to do with his age rather than his powers. The anime adaptation conveniently utilizes his abilities by giving him the task of creating Phantom Zone using plants during each battle.
• Radiant: Jill is a dryad and has the ability to grow and interact with plants, her husband Myr can also interact with plants but can only grow stumps and dead wood since he's half human, half pixie, and Seth gains the same abilities as Myr after being brooded by Jill and later gains the ability to grow plants with enough Fantasia.
• Rozen Maiden:
  • Suiseiseki and Souseiseki. Moreso in Suiseiseki's case since we see her growing plants more often than her sister and to drive the point home, her Drama CD song is called "Green Thumb" (Midori no Yubi).
  • Hina-Ichigo also has plant powers, but she is far weaker than the twins.
• Sailor Moon:
  • Sailor Jupiter uses plants more than thunder in her attacks in the manga. The '90s anime stripped this element of her powers entirely, only invoking this in her final attack, "Jupiter Oak Evolution", which still used thunder instead. She even wore a belt filled with potpourri in the manga and this is retained in Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon.
  • Tellu of the Witches 5 (who is one of Sailor Jupiter's evil counterparts) in Sailor Moon S specialises in plants that steal people's souls (or Heart Crystals in the anime), while in Sailor Moon Super S, Cere Cere of the Amazoness Quartetto manipulates flowers. There were also several monsters with this ability — such as Petasos and the three Plant Sisters.
• The Secret Garden: Ben Weatherstaff used to tend to the garden when Lilias was still alive, and after Mary discovers it, she works to being it back with Dickon. While she's a rich girl who's never done a day of work in her life before, Ben and Dickon show her how to become this trope.
• Sekirei: Kusano has this as her power. She even carries around a little potted plant with her at all times and can use said plant to snag people with vines.
• Sonic X featured an alien race called the Seedarians. One Seedarian, Cosmo, became a main character, while others are actually Metarex.
• Tokyo Mew Mew: Taruto turns regular plants into Plant Aliens in order to use this ability. The other enemies just use mutant animals for their Monster of the Week.
• Aki Izayoi/Akiza Izinski of Yu-Gi-Oh! 5Ds uses the Rose archetype, most of the members of which are Plant-Types, and her psychic powers bring them to life. Her Black Rose Dragon can attack with a storm of black rose petals and thorny vines. In her days as the Black Rose Witch, she uses her monsters' plant attacks to hurt and torture her opponents.
• Yuri from Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V uses a Predator Plants deck (localized as Predaplant), which are themed after carnivorous plants and are, of course, Plant-Types. His Signature Mon, Starve Venom Fusion Dragon, also has the carnivorous plant motif and can use its plant-like body parts to absorb ATK and Monster Effects and eat enemies with them.
• Kurama of YuYu Hakusho, who shows just how dangerous this ability can be when given to someone who employs Batman Gambits in battle.

Arts

• Sistine Chapel: In the second ceiling fresco, God can be seen pointing his hand at a sprouting tree, showing his creation of all the plants and vegetation in the world.

Asian Animation

• Catch! Teenieping: The Royal Teenieping Chachaping wields a watering can that allows her to revive dying plants as well as other living beings, simply by swinging it and letting her Water of Hope splash on the plant or living being in question. Likewise, when Princess Romi transforms into Princess Clover, she gains the same ability when she summons and uses a watering can using her wand, with the water transforming into things like clouds that can stop enemies.
• In Pleasant Goat and Big Big Wolf: Mighty Little Defenders, Tibbie wields a bow and arrow that can create big vines wherever it shoots.

Comic Books

• The DCU has The Green, an elemental force connected to all plant life and the source of plant-based powers. Notable people with connections to The Green include:
  • Batman foe Pamela "Poison Ivy" Isley, one of the most famous examples of this trope . Her levels of deadliness vary across different adaptations, as she didn't receive her plant controlling power until the post crisis continuity. In the one shot Batman: Poison Ivy, her powers are strong enough to grow an entire jungle on an barren island. She has shown some capacity for good, also. When Gotham was in the midst of No Man's Land, Ivy killed Clayface and used her powers to grow fruits and vegetables for the stranded people to eat in a coordinated effort with Batman, and Convergence shows that her gardens are almost singlehandedly responsible for feeding Gotham while it's under the dome. Other times, she can at times be an eco-terrorist, ranging from destroying polluting industries to considering exterminating the human race so they'll knock off the polluting. Otherwise, she gets her kicks by feeding people to giant pitcher plants and Venus Fly traps. Lady's in Arkham for a reason.
  • Her predecessor, Jason Woodrue, the Floronic Man.
  • Vertigo Comics' Black Orchid, who had a variety of plant-based powers.
  • Swamp Thing and Tefe Holland; the former of whom is, well, practically a living swamp as well as champion of The Parliament of the Trees, and the latter, his sort-of child, who shares his control over plants (among other abilities).
  • Justice Society of America villain Blackbriar Thorn, an ancient druid leader from Roman days, is the oldest and, Depending on the Writer, strongest champion of the Green.
  • The Parliament of the Trees, a communal mind of plant elementals living in the Green's dimension that protect the biosphere.
  • Wonder Woman (Rebirth): Peony McGill/Star Blossom has the power of chlorokinesis.
  • Star Lily of Wonder Woman and the Star Riders has the ability to make plants grow even in the most inhospitable places.
• Redlance in ElfQuest. And, of course, his ancestor, Goodtree.
• The Heap is capable of quickly rooting itself to the ground and blending itself into foliage. It is also able to exert limited control over plant life in its immediate vicinity.
• The Herder Witch: One of Morie the witch's magical abilities. How she eludes the star seers' first attempt to kill her is by creating a new forest right in the flat valley she's caught in, allowing her cover to hide.
• Inhumans: One of the evil inhumans is an inhuman named Timberius, who resembles a humanoid tree, and has the power to control plants, he can even grow vines strong enough to temporarily restrain the hulk.
• Legion of Super-Heroes, Chlorophyll Kid of the "Substitute Heroes" has this essentially taken to its logical conclusion — he can accelerate the growth of plants, and that's his only power. The inability to actually control plants is the largest reason for him never being accepted.
• Plantman of Marvel Comics. A fairly lame villain, which he lampshades in Paradise X when he points out that he could easily have used his abilities to feed the hungry instead of for theft. (Spider-Man tells him this in an earlier story where he goes gunning for revenge against Generation X; the villain thanks him for the career advice, but says, "I've always had my heart on world domination".) Took a Level in Badass when he joined the Thunderbolts and renamed himself "Blackheath".
• W.I.T.C.H. has Cornelia, the Earth Guardian, who provides the page picture. She is capable of some pretty cool stuff, including growing immense plants.
• X-Men has the Gentleman Thief and reformed villain Black Tom Cassidy. Less prominent mutants with plant-based powers include Humus Sapien, Sycamore, Tree Man, and the sadly deceased Pako.

Fan Works

• All Assorted Animorphs AUs: In "What if they were in Emelan?", Ax has the power to make plants grow rapidly, even if they've been reduced to planks of wood.
• Anything for Family: Cure Blossom and Cure Flora use their flower powers to make a vine-and-flower rope, which they use to break into the Masked Shadow's lair.
• Child of the Storm:
  • Harry's World-Healing Wave has among its side-effects, the effect of restoring forests that had been cut down recently (or, in the case of the Forest of Arden in England, some centuries ago, burying a large golf course), with the explanation that the character behind it had been a) a Reality Warper at the time, b) grown up reading stories with forests that were far thicker and more common than they actually were.
  • In the sequel, Ghosts of the Past, Wanda Maximoff does this on a smaller scale against Selene, by growing a White Ash up through her in a matter of seconds.
• Destiny Intertwined: The basic form of the Earth element focuses on the direct manipulation of plant life. All Earth dragons begin by crating blasts of nature energy. The most common variant, green Earth, focuses on controlling flora, such as by creating and controlling vines or breathing out streams of leaves. Brown Earth also includes control of wood and roots alongside soil.
• Domoverse: Amanda, who uses it to force-grow poisonous plants like poison ivy, and greenbriar, as weapons.
• Equestria Girls: Friendship Souls:
  • The Queen of Thorns/Gaia Everfree had this power, being able to even make plants grow in the desert wastelands of Hueco Mundo when normally even bringing in soil from the human world can't let that happen, tying to her "theme" of cycles.
  • As in canon, Gloriosa Daisy has this power, but it's actually a Fullbring Gaia Everfree ensured that she'd develop, having been grooming her family line to provide a new host body for her. The magic of the geodes merely brought it out and masked the Hollow energy.
• Everqueen: Isha, a fertility goddess, has innate and profound control over life in general but a particular affinity for plants. She can control them, alter them as she pleases, and read their genomes with enough thoroughness to recreate their entire evolutionary history.
• A Flower's Touch: Aerith finds that she can thread the Lifestream through plants and cause them to grow at an extremely fast rate.
• A Gamer In South Blue: "Oaken Fist" Kowalik is one of the top three on the South Blue's most wanted list. He has the Paramecia Wood-Wood Fruit that allows him to generate a seemingly endless number of wooden constructs as well as super-powering his ship's wooden paddles to ensure that nobody ever catches him. His ultimate technique has him drain an entire island of its nutrients and plant life to grow into a Treant of Adam wood.
• Guys Being Dudes: As in Pokémon canon, Shaymin has the power to regrow dead plants and restore polluted land. This is expanded to being able to remove pesticides as well, with the park grass it restores coming back dotted with native ground cover and wildflowers.
• In Heart of the Forest, deer can use elixirs to speed up plant growth and ask them to temporarily move in certain ways.
• The Steven Universe fic Home and Other Stories describes Rose learning how to use this power.
  Venus flytraps, vines decorated in thorns, followed her flag and stormed after the enemy at her call.
• In Keepers of the Elements, Heather gains this ability along with Earth and Metal.
• Quill Blayde in The Keys Stand Alone: The Soft World is a wizard of nature, though his function with the four is more as adviser and spy. During the parade fight, he triggers some seeds he'd planted in the area in anticipation of the fight, and at least one bad guy gets swallowed up by vines, though Ringo is underwhelmed by how little the seeds do compared to how much work the wizard put into their prep.
• At the beginning of the The Loud House fic Loud Heroes, Lily gains superpowers that allow her manipulate plants and create plant manifestations of her own, based on her name being the same as a flower species. Fittingly enough, she's subsequently given the superhero name of Greenthumb.
• A Minor Variation: Twilight Sparkle's magic eruption occurs at Sweet Apple Acres and not Canterlot. This results in her having an amazing affinity with plant life.
• My Brave Pony: Starfleet Magic:
  • Invoked with Buddy Rose to some degree. He is so good, he can even restore dead plants.
  • Melantha from My Brave Pony: Star Fleet Magic III.
• My Little Marriage Mary Is A Mare: Mary, as a pony, slowly discovers that she can influence plants more or less unconsciously. She's initially very reluctant to use these powers, as they're just another layer of bizarre on top of what already happened.
• Caster in The Sage's Disciple has the title "Sage of the Forest" for good reason. So far, he's used his woodshaping abilities to craft Wicker Men golems and Team Caster's base camp.
• In Son of the Sannin, aside from the canon characters like Hashirama Senju and Tenzo/Yamato, Jiraiya and Tsunade's daughter, Kaida, is revealed to have Wood Release while tending to the garden's plants. Much later, Rin Nohara comes Back from the Dead, and the process granted her, among other abilities, the use of Wood Release.
• Swarming With Hatred: Cure Felice, with help from Cure Custard and Cure Fortune, uses nature powers to restore grass and wildflowers to a dying field.
• In Tealove's Steamy Adventure, the villainous cultist sends an army of mobile plants to attack the protagonists.
• In Twinkling in the Dark, local Sailor Earth Cure August has nature-based powers. She can throw thorns at enemies and make small saplings grow into giant trees in an instant.

Films — Animation

• Encanto: Isabela Madrigal has the gift of growing plants to her will. Initially its mostly flowers, befitting the very feminine, beautiful young woman she is, but that's only because of pressures her Abuela and society has placed upon her, and when she starts freeing herself from it, she begins experimenting and sprouting other plants, like cacti, palm trees, and carnivorous sundews.
• In Epic (2013) Queen Tara can control the forest.
• In My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Legend of Everfree The eponymous Gaea Everfree has this power. Both the "legend" and Gloriosa Daisy, where the latter surrounds Camp Everfree in vines after she transforms from using too much Equestrian magic.
• A Troll in Central Park has a protagonist that has a literal green thumb, which can grow plants and bring them to life, and even create enormously tall plants as well.

Films — Live-Action

• In E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, E.T. came to Earth in the first place as he was a botanist, studying alien (to him) plant life. And he did seem to have a symbiotic relationship to plants as well as with Eliot. When he "died" a flowering plant seemed to wither and die; then, when he came back to life, the plant bloomed again.
• Will's friend, Layla, in Sky High (2005). Though she's classified as "Hero Support" AKA a sidekick, she ultimately shows as much power as any of her superhero classmates. Her earlier classification was the result of her being an Actual Pacifist regarding her powers.
• Twilight Zone: The Movie: In the final scene of "It's a Good Life", Anthony turns the desert landscape into a beautiful garden filled with many different kinds of flowers as he and Helen Foley drive away from his old house.

Literature

• 100 Cupboards has a more specific variation, with the affinity of the Green Men to their bonded plant. We see Henry (dandelions) grow glowing flowers that can start fires, Mordecai (grapes) use magical vines as bindings to Seal Evil In A Can, and Monmouth (aspens) apply his power to another wood and transform an oaken ship into a floating aspen forest.
  • Darius specifically avoids doing this, as it would prove his bonded plant isn't a mighty oak at all, but a toadstool.
• Belgarath, challenged on his identity early in The Belgariad, proves it by jamming a twig from his horse's tail into the cracks in some flagstones and growing it into an apple tree. Then he orders the knight who challenged him to care for that tree for the rest of his life. At last report, the knight and his family still were. Similar feats of plant manipulation appear sporadically throughout the series. Garion himself actually creates an entirely new species of flower.
• Blue Moose: The Moose hums an early spring into existence, with the meadows becoming green and flowers blooming.
• The Burning Kingdoms: After getting back in touch with their temple training, Bhumika and Priya can access a variety of nature-based magical powers. It appears this is a common form of magic.
• The Camp Half-Blood Series:
  • Children of Demeter (goddess of the harvest) have this power. Meg from The Trials of Apollo is noted as being unusually strong on this front.
  • Children of Dionysus have a more limited version of this ability, mainly applying to crops that can be fermented into alcohol (we see it applied with grapes). Dionysus is the god of wine, after all.
• In Castle Hangnail, Molly has a spell for plant growth, which she has used to win SecondPrize in farm shows. She uses it to good effect in the final battle against the evil sorceress.
• Circleverse:
  • Plant mages in Tamora Pierce's Emelan universe, most notably Briar and Rosethorn, can exclusively manipulate plants. Importantly, this is not an example of What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?, as demonstrated in Street Magic when a plant mage brings everything that was or had been a plant around a house to life and makes them so strong that trying to burn them down didn't work. It's explicitly stated that it'll be years before anyone can get close to the scene.
  • Briar and Rosethorn specifically cultivate seeds to put in little cloth balls so they can plant them at need. This in itself is not terribly impressive until you learn that those seed balls either become clinging vines that can restrain large numbers of heavily armed people, rock-destroying plants accelerated so they can tear down stone walls in minutes, or vines with incredibly sharp thorns, which Briar can grow so fast that he uses them to rip straight through an assassin who thought he could sneak up behind his back.
  • They also have the ability to boost the natural abilities of plants. When their city was struck by plague they spent hours in the medicine stores, making all the dried herbs and treatments super-powerful, saving hundreds of lives. Similarly, they also use their powers to grow larger and healthier plants, and research diseases afflicting crops and forests, showing the peaceful powers of this trope.
• Codex Alera:
  • Woodcrafters, though no one in their right mind would mistake them for useless; a Knight Flora can basically become invisible if there's enough plant matter nearby and they're some of the deadliest archers ever since their abilities give them Improbable Aiming Skills. Woodcrafters can also sense changes in plant matter as well, making them excellent scouts and sentries. A good woodcrafter who is also a good earthcrafter, like Bernard or Fidelias, is an even better archer, being able to wield ridiculously large and powerful bows thanks to earth-granted Super-Strength.
  • Woodcrafting can also be used to grow crops really fast, but this feature is not generally made use of because it exhausts the soil within a couple of years.
  • Octavian makes an epic use of this in the sixth book when he needs to break through walls that have been furycrafted to shrug off fire and lightning and be impossible to break via earthcrafting. So he summons wind and water to cover the wall in seeds, then makes them grow so fast that they rip it to pieces.
• Dark Shores: Tenders, that is individuals marked by Yara, goddess of earth and everything that grows from it, can make plants grow rapidly and protect them from pests.
• In Devon Monk's Dead Iron, Rose can hear plants talk. She tries to ignore it; wearing her Orphan's Plot Trinket helps.
• The one lion and eagle from The Divine Comedy ties his golden chariot to the dead Tree of Life and the tree blossoms on every branch with flowers the color of blood in the starlight. The cost of this bio-salvation is that the chariot is attacked and mutated into a multi-headed monster dragged out of the Garden.
• Anna in Finding Gaia has this ability, as well as the ability to reverse the process to get expended energy back when needed.
• Green of Green Angel has such a green thumb that she's named after it. Unlike many people where the thought doesn't even occur to them, she primarily uses it to grow food, especially after the nearby city's blown up and refugees flood to her village. She also seems to have a host of minor earth-type abilities: She can detect groundwater for the village's new well, and tell apart metals by touch.
• In Loyal Enemies, the Staff of Fertility, an artifact the elves use to keep their city alive, can make plants grow to incredible sizes and in desired shapes in an instant, although it must be active and present for the enhanced plants to stay alive, which becomes a problem when the staff is stolen. This is Played for Laughs upon its triumphant return. Elven archmage Morriel uses the staff to make a fir grow in the middle of the throne room in celebration and only after having rejoiced at its sight for a proper amount of time do the elves notice that they're going to have to get rid of the thing the conventional way. Shelena mentions sawing sounds coming out of the throne room when the heroes take their leave from the elven kingdom.
• Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children: Fiona Frauenfeld — it's her peculiarity. She can make plants grow very fast, and in whatever shape she pleases.
  She bent down and held one of her palms above the grass. A few seconds later, a hand-shaped section of blades wriggled and stretched and grew until they were brushing the bottom of her palm.
• The Perfect Run: A not uncommon Green power. Usually, this involves control and supernatural growth of a specific plant, but some people gain the power to encourage the growth of all plants. It's slower and not as useful in combat, but has wider-reaching implications.
• Aretzes in The Quest of the Unaligned get this as one facet of their earth magic. Though this power is often used to promote the growth of crops, limited numbers of aretzes (and the fact that they are primarily healers) mean that a lot of ordinary agriculture is needed as well.
• In the Rainbow Magic series, plant and flower-themed fairies have this power.
• The Reader (2016) has the chief mate of the Current of Faith. His grandmother taught him how to talk to all the trees in the grove they used to live by. When he was blinded and the trees were harvested to make a ship, he thought they were gone forever but later he followed their voices and found Reed's ship. Now he can hear the voices of the hull and knows everything that happens on the ship.
• Hawthorne of Rumor's Block can not only control plants but genetically modify them to combine the traits of different species.
• RWBY: Fairy Tales of Remnant: The Story of the Seasons is first told in the main show, which appears to occur over a single day, thereby resulting in Spring appearing to grow plants at super-fast speeds even before she's given magic. This is averted in the book, where each sister spends their entire respective season with the Old Wizard, resulting in him having company for a full year. Spring therefore tends his garden and grows crops in a normal way over the course of many months.
• In The Secrets of Drearcliff Grange School and The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School, Fleur Paquignet has an affinity with plants, and can cause them to grow in inhospitable conditions and at unnatural speeds.
• The Stormlight Archive has Progression, a power that allows the Radiants of Truthwatcher and Edgedancer orders to make plants grow in an instant. This particular aspect of Progression is usually overshadowed by its other application, Healing Hands, though Lift will sometimes use it to grow vines she can climb.
• In Stranger And Stranger, April manifests this Blessing after she gets possessed.
• Swan in Swan Song has this uncanny ability to cause green to sprout despite a seven-year nuclear winter.
• In Tales of the Frog Princess Princess Hazel, though presumably possessing all the powers of the Green Witch, specializes in plants and flowers especially. Though it's mentioned that she turned around the kingdom's failing crops and that she has used plants against people (her sister) before, the plants are seen more as a nuisance than a help, as they've basically taken over the castle and made it impractical for combat.
• Hanami of Tasakeru wields the Mage Flower, which can grow pretty much anything, anywhere, in any shape. In a subversion of Reed Richards Is Useless (as mentioned above), she provides much-needed food for the other Outcasts.
• The Trope Namer is almost certainly Tistou, from Maurice Druon's Tistou les pouces verts ("Tistou Greenthumbs", in English), who has the power to make plants grow faster with but a touch of his thumb.
• Trapped in a Dating Sim: The World of Otome Games is Tough for Mobs: The World Tree worshipped by the people of the Alzer Republic offers Power Tattoo crests that follow a strict hierarchy enforcing the nation's Fantastic Caste System, where lower nobles' spells are nullified when used against higher nobles. Notably, the tree has a will of it's own, and will De-power anyone who violates that will, typically by being caught oath breaking. The spells include vines that act as Anti-Magic.
• In Ruth Frances Long's The Treachery of Beautiful Things, the piper can cause roses to entangle Jack.
• In Vampire Academy, Posthumous Character Saint Vladimir, Sonya Karp, Oksana, Lissa Dragomir, and Adrian Ivashkov are all spirit users who can make plants grow.
• In The Vazula Chronicles, Brody has the power to make plants grow and move around. During Brody, Bianca, and Heath's expedition in A Kingdom Discovered, Brody makes the seaweed form ropes to pull the ship away from the Mega Maelstrom. In A Kingdom Restored, he uses plant roots to dig a tunnel to break the Record Master out of prison.
• The Wandering Inn has the [Druid] class which does exactly this, growing grass, exotic plants, and in one case an entire hedge maze, along with the [Green Mage] Moore.
• The Nym in The Wheel of Time series, are plant people with such powers. They were created specifically to help grow crops and gardens. The Ogier have a lesser ability called tree-singing, which can strengthen a tree and hasten its growth, or encourage it to grow into a specific shape like a chair or staff, which will be far more durable and lasting than ordinary wood.
• Plantwitches in The Witchlands can control the way plants go and make them grow far more than the earth they're in would usually permit.
• Irene of Xanth only has the ability to make plants grow, but Xanth is home to a staggeringly vast array of magical plants that she can use in different situations. She even carries a selection of seeds with her, so she can grow many useful plants wherever she happens to be.

Live-Action TV

• Terra and Flora from Fate: The Winx Saga are both Earth Fairies with the power to manipulate plant growth.
• Kamen Rider Gaim, about halfway in to the story, introduces the Inves Overlords, intelligent and powerful inhumanoids who learned to manipulate the plantlife that took over their native dimension, now known as the Helheim Forest.
• Landwights from Lost Girl. Appropriately enough, one is working as a gardener at a country club.
• Super Sentai and Power Rangers use this as an alternative "Earth" power to Dishing Out Dirt. Wielders include NinjaYellow, GingaPink, MagiGreen/Green Mystic Ranger, and ShinkenGreen/Green Samurai Ranger.
  • Shinkenger/Samurai was a rare version to not file plant and rock powers under 'Earth,' giving the plants to Green and the rocks to Yellow. This keeps us to four elements instead of making lightning the fifth like most element-based series. (Well, amongst the starting five. The Sixth Ranger has Light.)
  • There were a couple of Monsters of the Week who had plant-based powers, such as the Spitflower and Octo-Plant from Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers and Wild Weeder from Power Rangers Turbo.
• Willow: The very first spell Willow teaches Dove is one to make a plant grow from the ground. She succeeds finally after much struggle, but doesn't see it since she's been kidnapped then.

Manhwa

• Area D has a deconstruction. One of the Altered early on has this power, and Jin copies and uses it, however, the power has the realistic drawback: growing a living organism will drain the user's energy and nutrients since the plants need it to grow. What's more, the original user banked on this to subdue him along with his team.

Tabletop Games

• Chaotic has the Vine Snare attack, which slows down enemies and can only be performed by Creatures able to use Earth attacks.
• Dungeons & Dragons has a number of spells and powers for controlling plants, most of them in the hands of the Druid class, who can entangle enemies in rapid plant growth, warp and manipulate wood, animate Plant Mooks, and much more. The Verdant Lord Prestige Class focuses on this aspect of the class, turning Druids into outright masters of plants. It returns in Fourth edition as a paragon path for the Warden, the Primal Defender class.
• Exalted: Wood is one of the five basic elements of creation, and beings associated with it — such as wood elementals, gods of forests and plant life, Raptok Dragon Kings, and Wood Aspect Dragon-Blooded — can wield powers allowing them to shape and alter plants and speed or direct their growth. Besides plants, the element is thematically associated with growth, the drive for living things to spread and survive, and poison, and these things often factor into powers associated with it. Wood Aspect Dragon-Blooded are completely immune to all natural poisons, for instance, and weapons aligned with elemental wood can do things like release clouds of potent toxins.
• Magic: The Gathering:
  • As Green is the color of nature, most Green planeswalkers and mages and many Green creatures can animate and control plants in various manners.
  • Players who build decks heavy on Plant creatures and/or ones with Green Thumbs themselves fall under this trope through the game's basic concept of players taking the role of in-universe planeswalkers casting spells and controlling summoned beings.
• Mutants & Masterminds: The Plant Control power. Its default effect conjures a swarm of vines in a designated area to bind and restrain enemies, but Alternate Powers allow it to branch out into numerous other functions, including creating structures out of plant matter (Create Object), conjuring toxic pollen to disorient opponents (Stun), and manipulating internal flora to cause weakness (Nauseate). The Green Man, a villain in Freedom City, is a notable wielder of this power within the game's canon.
• Pathfinder:
  • The Greensinger druid archetype gains an empathic ability to control plant life and a loyal sentient plant companion rather than the Druid's usual animal buddies.
  • Plant-based and/or forest-dwelling monsters such as green dragons, Treants and forest blights can often animate and control plant life.
• Scion:
  • In first edition, the Boon of Fertility's Hero rank powers range from "keep a plant alive no matter what the conditions" to "make sure a crop suffers no blight" and "make plants grow anywhere" — the accompanying illustration depicts a car overgrown with vines. Some of the higher-level powers allow you to accelerate plant growth at ridiculous speeds, to the point that you can create a forest in seconds. Another power allows you to spontaneously create any sort of plant in existence, and it can be used to create instant battering rams. You call Fertility a lame power when someone hits you with a redwood tree at a hundred miles an hour.
  • Fertility returns in second edition as a Purview, though most of the nature theme has gone to the new Wild Purview. Doesn't mean Fertility is useless, though — the sample text describing it has a Scion give a minotaur lung cancer.
• Warhammer:
  • Blood Bowl: The Horticulturalists of Nurgle (specialist Wizards available to hire by Chaos Chosen, Chaos Renegade, and Nurgle teams in the 5th Edition of the game) can cause the weeds and grass of a Blood Bowl pitch to writhe with life before they rot to nothing. The Horticulturalist is able to use this ability in an attempt to trip opposing players trying to Go For It or to knock them from their feet with a rapid bloom of putrid fauna.
  • Warhammer Fantasy: Wizards who channel the Wind of Life use a combination of this and healing magic — besides being able to heal and strengthen allies, they can influence plant growth or call on animated vegetation to attack their foes.
• The World of Darkness:
  • Demon: The Fallen has Lore of the Wild, which is quite useful. Examples include plants, including ivy, tearing down a wall, as well as the usefulness of being able to sense things that are near to plants.
  • Vampire: The Requiem downplays this — significantly — with a variant of the Animalism power that affects plants. Trouble is, it doesn't let plants grow or move more quickly than they ordinarily could...
  • Werewolf: The Apocalypse: The now-extinct Grondr wereboars could make plants grow to astonishing speed, causing great redwoods to grow in just one year, with a powerful but common Gift.
• Yu-Gi-Oh!: Plants are among the monster types in the game. Originally, they were a weak and overlooked type but started to get some strong support focusing on swarming and graveyard revival. One of the more popular Plant-type archetypes is Aroma. Aroma monsters have effects that trigger when you gain Life Points and have higher LP than the opponent, and have multiple ways to do so. Not only are they powerful, but even if you do overcome their first wave, the nature of the archetype means it takes forever to bring them down, giving them time for a comeback.

Toys

• BIONICLE:
  • The Toa each wield an element, Plant Life/"The Green" being one of them. However, Toa with this power rarely come up in the main story.
  • The Makuta and the corresponding Rahkshi have this as the "Plant Control" power.
  • The Element Lord of Jungle on Bara Magna has this power, of course. He once used it to kill a bunch of warriors in the Core War by fusing them to the trees, their remains becoming the Forest of Blades.
  • This has been given a boost in the 2015 series reboot, with the power of Jungle now replacing Air. Lewa, for example, was a Toa of Air in the original canon; now he's labeled as the Master of Jungle, though some wind-based powers still remain in the form of Not Quite Flight.
• In Mixels, despite being heavily based around their biting abilities, the Fang Gang tribe are also heavily associated with wood and trees, thanks to being farmers to fit their appetites. Man of their unlockable abilities in Calling All Mixels involve them using logs to attack. Gobba is best known for his totem-creating skills (which he makes with his teeth).

Web Animation

• Dreamscape: Izane manipulates thorn-covered vines.
• DSBT InsaniT: Asia has plant-based powers.
• RWBY: In the Remnant fairytale, the Story of the Seasons, Spring, the second sister to appear, restored the Old Wizard's garden, fixing the fences and sowing seeds. The story strongly implies the plants were growing within the span of a day, suggesting she had some kind of supernatural ability to grow plants even before the Old Wizard rewarded her with elemental magic.
• Gaeous from the Sock Series can produce green tears that create giant sentient floras in mere seconds when they touch something. Their blood seems to be made of the same things since when they get impaled by the left tongue of a Cerberus-like monster, the monster gets infected by a plant and decapitate their left head with the middle one before the plant infect their whole body.

Webcomics

• Aurora (2019): One application of Life magic is speeding plant growth. One of the main characters, Alinua, has especially powerful life magic, as shown in Chapter 5 when she grows a massive tree in just a few minutes.
• In Bob and George, Mega Man has nothing but disdain for Wood Man and the Leaf Shield, even after using the latter to defeat Air Man.
  • Then there was Plant Man. Yeah. Plant Man.
  • Then again, he did manage to rip Cut Man limb from limb with vines in an earlier comic.
• The webcomic Bob the Angry Flower has Plantae, a supervillain whose plant control powers are useless because plants can't move. Only Bob is truly susceptible to his control, and even that is hit-or-miss.
• Thistle of Daughter of the Lilies apparently has a knack for magically growing plants.
• Erfworld: Flower Power magic is mainly used for promoting peace (through a variety of spells that can magically prevent targets from engaging in combat), but also functions as this from time to time. Florists in the Magic Kingdom (Janis included) feed their fellow casters by growing and selling crops, and Olive has demonstrated the ability to convert inert plant life into a variety of Plant Mooks.
• Far Star Summer School: Namtara, a student at Sunny Summer School, only cares about learning magic that can help her to grow plants. Fittingly, her familiar Anthosyn is a plant, and she adores him.
• Phyll from Godquest is the God of Plants and the Home, so this comes naturally to him.
• Ysengrin from Gunnerkrigg Court was given power over trees from Coyote, and most commonly uses it to make biological Powered Armor.
• Sul from Kiss Wood can't command the trees and plants but they choose to help him without him understanding how. For example, when they come to a broken bridge that they need to cross vines and tree roots come out of nowhere and rebuild the bridge for them to cross.
• Muted: The LeRoux family have abilities based on creating and manipulating plants. Jazmin's introduction in Episode 1 showed her creating flowers out of thin air, while Rowena created a cage made of vines to trap Camille when Camille first crossed into LeRoux territory. And Camille summons a plant demon during her ritual, rather than a bird demon as expected of a Severin.
• Sleepless Domain: Zoe mixes this with Extra-ore-dinary. Her slingshot pellets sprout metallic plants that can be used to weigh down, otherwise hinder, or even impale monsters.
• Unsounded: The ancient Tains, the first people to figure out how to use pymary, used it to grow plants, improve their farms and for healing. Ssael, who allied himself with the Gefendur invaders who were slaughtering his people for having a different religion, created the basis for modern pymary when he went against his people's decree and figured out how to use pymary for war and other things.
• The Strongest Florist has Jaeho, who plays the VR game New World not to fight or adventure, but to live his dream of becoming a florist. He spends so much admiring and studying the game's flowers he unlocks a series of initially weak botany "Skills", that rank up to the point he can control plants.

Web Original

• Afterlife SMP:
  • The Floran origin, held by Katherine on her first life and Lizzie on her second, can cause plants to grow faster. Katherine takes advantage of this in her second episode and builds a shop to share her power with the world, while Lizzie moves into the End to grow and sell exotic plants from there. On the sliding scale, this origin would fall under either 4 or 5 (since most Minecraft plants don't have biome/climate limitations on their growth, just where they spawn).
  • Not quite plants and to a smaller extent, but the Truffle origin, held by Meghan on her first life, can turn dirt and grass blocks into mycelium.
• In Darwin's Soldiers, Dr. Shelton gains the power to talk to plants when he injects himself with a syringe that grants a random power. Said ability proves to be completely useless and he repeatedly complains about not having gotten something better.
• Feather Adventures: Sporshey, an Alternate Universe version of Sqaishey, has powers over nature and plant life, but is also limited by the level of pollution on their land. When the land is heavily polluted, Sporshey loses their powers and their feathers' colours fade and turn grey, and has to clear away the pollutants to regain their colour, energy, and powers. Fittingly, the episode they are introduced has a Green Aesop.
• A limited version in Hanazuki: Full of Treasures. Moonflowers are the only beings capable of growing Treasure Trees. The white Treasures (which act as acorns) need an emotional trigger from a Moonflower to be able to grow, but when the Moonflower feels that emotion and immediately plants the Treasure, the tree grows instantly.
• How to Hero features a hero called The Photsynthesizer who is described as "The man who eats like a plant, likes taking pictures, and plays electropop music." It is suggested that readers team-up with him in the event of a zombie apocalypse due to plants' and zombies' age-old animosity.
• SCP Foundation: SCP-407 is a musical recording that causes anyone listening to it to eventually burst into massive plant growth.

Western Animation

• Waterbenders in Avatar: The Last Airbender possess the ability to manipulate plants by bending the water within them, unofficially dubbed "plantbending", though only one person (Huu) has been shown using it. It ranks low on the lameness scale on the basis of the main practitioner using it to form a humongous organic mecha which he operates from within, using entangling vines and brute force on his enemies. The same thing, when done to people or animals, is known as bloodbending.
• Ben 10:
  • Downplayed with Wildvine from the original series. His plant-controlling ability is mostly limited to extending and altering his own plant body, but has a few minor abilities that play this trope straight, such as being able to merge with plants to camouflage himself and growing vines from the seeds on his back.
  • Ben 10: Alien Force's Swampfire. In addition to being himself a plant, he can generate a gas that allows him to control plants. If there are no plants in the area, he can also spawn seeds that produce incredibly fast-growing plants.
• When the true Princess in The Care Bears: Adventure in Wonderland revives dying plants, it's in a shower of sparkles.
• Danny Phantom: Undergrowth and Sam in "Urban Jungle".
• Darkwing Duck villain Reginald Bushroot, who is a pastiche of various Green Thumb supervillains, mainly Poison Ivy and Floronic Man.
• The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: In one episoe, General Skarr is accidentally turned into a plant-man and given the power to control plants.
• Hamster & Gretel: The one-shot villain La Cebolla has the power to talk to and control onions.
• In the Masters of the Universe, there was Evil Seed, a demonic Plant Person who sought revenge against animal life and could command plants. In He-Man and the Masters of the Universe (2002), however, he was opposed by Moss Man, a benign plant spirit with similar powers. (Evil Seed was as much a Large Ham as Skeletor; when He-Man asked Moss Man if he was always that way, the spirit just nodded and said, "Uh-huh.")
• In Herself the Elf, Creeping Ivy can grow long, tangling vines from her fingers to capture Herself remotely, and can also make leaf barriers to block her way.
• In the Justice League two-parter "Twilight", one of the children of New Genesis was having trouble working in the garden, complaining that it was difficult. High Father explains the virtue of hard work by accelerating the growth of the plant she was tending.
• The Legend of Korra: Vaatu can make spirit vines burst from the ground and manipulate them like Combat Tentacles. (It is unknown whether his counterpart, Raava, can do the same.) In the second season finale, Vaatu/Unalaq's One-Winged Angel form covers Republic City in a massive forest of these vines.
• Mia and Me: Onchao can make plants grow, even in areas that had been left barren by the villains' actions.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Earth ponies have a natural connection to nature that allows them to do this to some extent. For example, the Apples once grew an apple bigger than a pony and were going to enter it in a contest with similarly sized produce.
• In My Little Pony: Make Your Mark, when the magic of the crystals is revitalized, the Earth Ponies gain the ability to make plants grow with their hooves.
• The Owl House: The coven system in place on the Boiling Isles splits magic in a number of disciplines, the "Main Nine" including the Plant coven and its corresponding school track. Willow Park is the most prominent user, able to summon hordes of vines as Combat Tentacles in her first appearance, a feat impressive enough to convince the school's headmaster to switch her to the plant track. She later learns more diverse skills such as summoning Man Eating Plants. A few others in this track appear on occasion.
• Rugrats: Spoofed in an episode in which, while imagining themselves as a Five-Man Band, Tommy's power os to talk to pants. About as What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway? as you can get there.
• She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: Perfuma can control plant life and utilizes massive vines during combat as she derives her powers from the Heart-Blossom.
• Sonic Prime: In the Boscage Maze, Sonic and Thorn (a version of Amy) found the green paradox shard, and discovered it had the power to grow and control vines and trees.
• Steven Universe: In "Watermelon Steven", Steven discovers he can create sentient plants just like his mother could when she was alive, although he can't quite control them. In both cases, this (along with their healing power) turn out to be specific applications of a broader Biomanipulation ability.
• Toxic Crusaders: Major Disaster can control plants of the organism variety and, in one episode, power plants as well.
• Wakfu: Princess Amalia Sheran Sharm and her whole race, the Sadida, have powers over plants, being themselves Plant People. They can put it to a great variety of uses, including battles by creating large and fast-moving clusters of vines to strangle or crush their enemies.
• Winx Club has the appropriately-named Flora. In Season 4, we also meet another nature fairy named Diana; she is one of the Earth fairies that was imprisoned by the Fairy Hunters.
• W.I.T.C.H.: Cornelia and Kadma can do this; it comes naturally with being the Guardian of Earth. Cornelia thinks this ability is lame at first (at least, compared to her earth-moving powers), but learns to love it once she is able to grow flowers the size of skyscrapers.

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