Planimal



Sometimes, an organism will have both characteristics of a plant (for example, ability to photosynthesize, has leaves, flowers and other plant parts) and characteristics of an animal (The ability to move around at will and it resembles a familiar creature). Scientists don't know how to classify it. We like to call it a Planimal. (Please note that mushrooms are fungi, not plants - mushroom-animal hybrids don't belong here.)

See also Man-Eating Plant for carnivorous plants that may or may not show animal traits and Plant Person, Sister Trope for sentient humanoid cases, and Plant Aliens, the science fiction counterpart.

Film

 * In The Little Shop of Horrors, Audrey II is a plant, but has vocal chords and apparently, a full digestive system in its stalk. Kind of justified seeing as how it's from space.
 * Biollante from Godzilla vs. Biollante. Also part human ghost.
 * Gremlins 2: After drinking a potion from the science lab, a Gremlin turns into a Gremlin/Vegetable hybrid.
 * Troll 2, (which had nothing to do with the original Troll), features goblins (not Trolls) which turn people into edible plantmen because they are vegetarians.
 * Apes and wolves made out of plants played an important role in Lady in the Water.
 * In Batman and Robin, Poison Ivy tries to create creatures like this so plants can finally fight back against humans. She even shows a first example of her creations to Mr. Freeze.

Literature

 * A major theme throughout Una Woodruff's Amarant: The Flora and Fauna of Atlantis; most of the "fauna" are actually motile seed- or pollen-carrying stages of plants.

Live-Action TV

 * Tremors the Series is the Trope Namer. The Planimal was a plant/root/thing, but also has a circulation system. It was a mixture of DNA from; the Pitcher Plant, Venus Fly Trap and some sort of lizard.
 * The creatures of Darwin IV, from Alien Planet.
 * A few pop up in Farscape. Zhaan is a Plant Person but has a lot of animal traits; one food her people cultivate is explicitly partly like a plant and animal.

Mythology and Folklore

 * The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, a legend from Medieval Europe about a plant that grew sheep as its fruit.

Tabletop Games

 * The Manual of the Planes for Dungeons & Dragons 3.5E describes an optional "Elemental Plane of Wood", complete with animals (and other creatures) made out of wood, sticks and leaves.

Video Games

 * Super Mario Bros.: Piranha Plants, Dino Piranha, etc.
 * Pikmin
 * Bulbasaur's family from Pokémon is both animal and plant simultaneously. As are a number of other Grass types that resemble animals such as the other Grass starters, Pansage, Leafeon, Deerling, Sawsbuck pictured above, and others.
 * Spore allows you to make anything. Surely you can make a Planimal?
 * Sim Earth let you raise carnivorous plants to sentience and create a civilisation, even high-tech space-faring plant life.
 * Super Scribblenauts allows you to add "wooden" to anything.
 * Spore plants in Fallout, one of which became sentient.
 * The Kikwis of The Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword look like a mix between a flowering plant, a beaver and a Kiwi.
 * The Koroks from The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker are vaguely person-shaped wooden figures with leaf masks. Apparently they used to be the much more human-like Kokiri from The Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.
 * Odin Sphere has Baromett plants, which grow sheep. Probably inspired by the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary mentioned under 'Mythology'.
 * Most of the martian wildlife in the Ultima spinoff Martian Dreams are ambulatory, sapient plants, while the animal kingdom consist solely of subterranean worms. Even the civilised martians were some variation of gourd. Humorously, they refer to the visiting humans as "worms", not as an insult, simply because it's the closest thing they can recognise us as.
 * Lashers from World of Warcraft are flowers that walk around on tentacle-like vines and whip enemies with a pair of thorny vines that serve as their "arms".
 * Ochu and Malboro from Final Fantasy are mobile, toothy plants; the Malboro even breathes like an animal, by inhaling and exhaling through its mouth.
 * Legend of Grimrock's Herders aren't technically planimals, since they're sentient (or at least aggressive and mobile) mushrooms, but it's close enough.
 * The Mother series has a number of these.
 * Mother has Woodahs and Big Woodahs.
 * EarthBound has two kinds of Mobile Sprouts, two kinds of Evil Mushrooms, Demonic Petunias, two kinds of Hostile Oak, and a giant mushroom boss named Shrooom!. Three Os, exclamation point included.
 * Mother 3 has two kinds of Beanlings, Cactus Wolves, Yammonsters, Grated Yammonsters, Muttshrooms, the same Evil Mushrooms from EarthBound (with different names) plus one new Evil Mushroom, Pigtunias, Tiny Forests, two kinds of Trees, Walking Bushies, and Zombieshrooms.
 * The Falcon Elm from Crea Vures, which is a giant bird rooted in the ground like a tree, with several bough-like wings.

Web Comics

 * Annyseed bumps into a rather assertive and agitated talking plant, whilst wandering through Hazels herb garden.

Western Animation

 * Spliced has the Swineapple; it's part pig, part pineapple.
 * Darkwing Duck has Dr. Bushroot, who turned himself into a half-plant, half-duck in a failed experiment.
 * One episode of Krypto the Superdog had Krypto and the Bathound facing off against a half-dog/half-plant villain named Dogwood who tried to bring the trees to life so they could rebel against humanity. Strangely it's not mentioned if he's associated with Poison Ivy, one of Batman's foes and a Plant Person.
 * In the episode "Family Appreciation Day" of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic, it's revealed that one of the inhabitants of the Everfree Forest are Timberwolves. Wolves made of actual timber.
 * Disney Junior's Octonauts brings us "Vegimals," a group of semi-anthropomorphic vegetables, with a turnip called "Tunip" as their leader. They communicate using cheeping and trilling noises and can whip up a mean "fish biscuit" (not made of actual fish, but tastes fishy.)

Real Life

 * Scientists have discovered a sea slug which eats certain algae and absorbs the chloroplasts, allowing it to perform photosynthesis.
 * Certain algaes have been known to make their way into salamander eggs so they can feed on the embryo. Instead, the algae can become part of the salamander, giving the salamander algae in its DNA.
 * While they are not true Planimals, a diverse number of animals use camouflage to resemble vegetation. Likewise, many plants, especially orchids, mimic animals, mostly their insect pollinators.
 * Behold, Euglena. It's a single celled organism that photosynthesises like an alga, but swims around like a protozoan. Before the kingdom Protista was created and it was realised organisms could be something other than an animal or a plant, botanists and zoologists used to fight over this little thing to determine whose field of study it belongs to. Even now Euglena is usually found in the first chapters of both zoology and botany books.