Man-eating tree
Partial from: http://www.travelintelligence.net/wsd/articles/art_1000915.html
In 1881 Carl Liche reported a virgin-sacrifice to a Malagasy man-eating tree which ‘as if instinct with demoniac intelligence fastened upon her in sudden coils round and round her neck and arms…there trickled down the stalk of the tree great streams of the viscid honey-like fluid mingled horribly with the blood and oozing viscera of the victim…May I never see such a sight again.’ In fact nobody but Liche ever saw ‘the devil tree.’
The agy tree meanwhile unarguably exists and I can personally vouch for the fact that its stinging hairs (which detach even in the mildest breeze) are at least ten times as painful as the sting of a common nettle. As one missionary traveller wrote of an agy tree ‘attack’ in 1879: ‘agony was writ plain over every line of my face.’ |
