h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Fenchurch, your family obviously enjoy themselves at Christmas!

Go on, have a go. We're all nice here.
Besides, we know Mycroft will eat us if we ignore him.

Gnomon, the trick is to be gratuitously reasonable. As many researchers will attest, an excess of lunacy is far less irritating than an excess of reasonableness

Twinkle, that doesn´t even count as an odd coincidence. The chance is 1 to less than 365, hardly any astronomical figures. Besides this is for synchronocity. Coincidences that seems connected through space and time.

Now that's synchronicity, Mandragora: how could you have possibly known that I originally considered adopting a screen name of Conte Bevisangue di Poplo to reflect my Lecter-esque culinary predilections? Maybe I shouldn't have eaten the plant with which you share a name...

Incidentally, what does the Scrymidden bit mean? The literal meaning - seer of dunghills - seems less than flattering.

I just have these flashes...
(BTW, did you use a dog to dig up the plant? Or are you immune to such things?)
No, the literal meaning's the one. I am constantly expanding my collection of fictional characters because they might come in handy, and one day I was idly thinking up names for a peasant's revolt. Amongst the Ebenezers and Yorricks were such characters as Frampton Pye and Lucius Scrymidden, the latter being somewhat apothecary-ish. I just like the name (and very few people have worked it out, congratulations.) and could also claim to be descended from a 14th century herbalist.
But that wouldn't be true, would it.

I wasn't there to witness the uprooting and didn't think to ask at the time how it was done, mainly because I didn't know the procedure involved. I can however confirm that it was done at night and that my plant-poaching friend did have a dog which may or may not have been involved. Unfortunately the mandrake's effect makes recalling any greater detail of that night a somewhat problematic affair

It's said that the root gives out a supersonic scream when it is pulled out, which kills anything that hears it. Dogs are expendable in this case.
How long have you been suffering the effects?

Supersonic? When did they agree on that. I thought it was only supposed to give a normal scream. Well, I don´t know how normal a scream is when coming from a plant.

Maybe I'm wrong... it makes a hellish row, in any case.
There are several screaming plants- pollard oaks screech at little children to scare them off, and roses will often give ladylike shrieks and faint elegantly.

Actually the one called mimose faints. If you touch it it makes the leaves hang loose down. Now if plants doesn´t have any sort of chemical nervous system, how should it be able to do this?

Hmmm... something similar to how the Venus Fly-trap snaps, maybe?

You mean by feeling something touch it? :/

Yes... I don't know how they work, though.

Lots of small hairs inside the trapper-thing. If two are touched at exactly the same time it claps.

That's reasonable. Like nasal hair and sneezing.
Is there any reason for this plant to faint?

Hmm, that´s what the article I read was about. Nobody really knows, but they had a theory it might be so the animals trying to eat it will loose their appetite thinking it´s faded. It doesn´t sound right to me.

Sounds right to me. It figures that, just as a flower will have brightly coloured petals in order to attract pollenators, a tree may have a way of pretending it's dead.

x x Fenny

Hmmm... from watching the behaviour of guinea pigs, they really don't care if it's green or wilted; they'll still eat it. (I saw one attempting to eat a slug once, but she didn't stay there long.)

Was that the slug which didn't stay there long, or the guinea pig?

x x Fenny