Here’s some advice that clever people will never need: don’t look for weeds in a movie theatre.
The Weed Science Society of America hinted otherwise and led us down the garden path. That’s usually a good place to find weeds, but such was not the case.
You see, the society suggested there was a connection between weeds and the blockbuster movie Avatar. Weed scientist Jodie Holt, a society fellow and University of California botanist, consulted on the 3D film and created a world of plant life for the fictional planet Pandora. Her knowledge of thistles was key to her work, the society said.
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We investigated. The lush botanical life Holt created for Pandora is astonishing but there weren’t any observable or identifiable weeds. Flying seeds vaguely similar to dandelion fluff made appearances, but that was it for investigations of fictional weed portrayal.
Nevertheless, we managed to mask our disappointment and sit through the whole movie – purely in the interests of weed science, of course.
It turns out that Holt created a host of fictional plants for Pandora and wrote about them in a field guide to the movie that is one of those inevitable money-making spinoffs associated with movies these days.
She assigned them Latin names and included an essay on the dangers of introducing foreign plants to planet Earth, which is a valuable real-life lesson about weed spread into different countries and ecosystems.
Prairie farmers can be glad our ecosystem wouldn’t support Pandora’s fictional red-spiraled helicoradian, a carnivorous plant that collapses into itself when touched. Not only would it be difficult to spray, but your cows might be devoured before Monsanto could develop a herbicide or a genetic modification to control it.
Though not readily observed in the movie, Holt also invented a scorpion thistle for Pandora, modelled loosely on the artichoke thistle, upon which she is an expert. It exudes acidic sap that can eat through rock and create its own seed bed. That would be pretty handy in some rock-infested prairie fields, wouldn’t it?
Avatar is a 3D movie with a one-dimensional story and essentially the same theme as Dances with Wolves and Pocahontas. The detail and special effects were impressive. But it really could have used more weeds.
