Margaret St. Clair 11 min read

'I never saw a plant I liked the looks of less,' says the old spaceman, warning Amy to watch out for the strange specimen her son smuggled past the planetary quarantine.

Margaret St. Clair's 1950 story grows creeping first-contact horror from an innocent-looking alien houseplant. Sharp, wry, sinister golden-age SF. Read it for a deliciously ominous tale about a botanical gift that no quarantine should ever have let through.

In its time

Published in 1950, during the 1950s, post-war optimism meets cold war anxiety.

Reading it

11 min read (a short story, a single idea, delivered and gone).