A plant’s guide to a better life:

“The smallest seedlings,” Demeter often told me, “Grow into

century oaks.”

- Excerpt from Dark Prophecy

The vines seemed to be growing, the foliage turning thicker and darker.
Collapsed.
She crouched next to the tomato plants and pressed her hand against the dirt.
The soil rumbled and began to heave upward. Instead, the plants parted. The
dirt rolled away. She planted the chia in the fissure, then wrung out
her still-wet skirt to water them.I watched, fascinated, as the small patch of
green thickened and flourished, forcing new cracks in the slate.
She closed her eyes in concentration. Faster than you could saych-ch-ch-chia, the
sprouts went into overdrive, spreading across the corridorlike a fast-motion sheet
of green ice. Sprouts wove together from ceiling to floor, wall to wall, until the
hallway was clogged with an impassable curtain of plants.

Excerpt from Burning Maze

She dug into the pouches on her belt, ripped open a packet of seeds and flung
them into the tunnel. Meg knelt before the seeds; her face scrunched in
concentration. The seeds erupted into tomato plants.
Their stems grew, interweaving across the mouth of the tunnel. Leaves unfurled
with ultra-speed. Tomatoes swelled into fist-size red fruits.
The tunnel was almost closed off when a dark feathery shape burst through a
gap in the net.
raked my left cheek.
The stems thickened and the roots struggled to take hold in the stone floor, but
it was a losing battle. Meg down there pacing, muttering to herself and shaking
out more packets of gardening seeds.
’ Meg thrust one of her swords into my hand, then rifled through her gardening
belt, glancing nervously at the strixes as they ascended.
 She ripped open a random packet and tossed seeds into the void. They burst like
heated popcorn kernels and formed grenade-size yams with leafy green stems.
They fell among the flock of strixes, hitting a few and causing startled
squawking, but the birds kept coming.
Meg ripped open a second seed packet. She showered the strixes with an
explosion of bushes dotted with green fruits. The birds simply veered around
them.
The seeds exploded like a battery
of fireworks. Green streamers arced across the void, anchoring against the far
wall and forming a row of vines that reminded me of the strings of a giant lute.
Meanwhile, the vines thickened, leaves unfurled, white flowers bloomed,
and strawberries ripened, filling the air with their sweet fragrance.
The chamber rumbled. Wherever the strawberry plants touched the stone, the
brick cracked and dissolved, giving the strawberries an easier place to root.
We watched in
amazement as the plants continued to grow, interlacing until a strawberry-runner
trampoline stretched across the entire area of the room at our feet.
In the back
corner stood a majestic Joshua tree, its shaggy branches holding up the roof,
growing into the ceiling and spreading across it in a web of
fuzzy branches and green spiky clusters.
She grabbed a packet from her belt and ripped it
open—spraying seeds in the path of the oncoming pandai.
Flutter and Decibel veered and screamed as the plants erupted, covering
them in fuzzy green nebulae of ragweed. Flutter smacked into the nearest wall
and began sneezing violently, the ragweed rooting him in place like a fly on
flypaper. Decibel crash-landed on the platform at Meg’s feet, the ragweed
growing over him until he looked more like a bush than a pandos—a bush that
sneezed a lot.

- Excerpt from The Hidden Oracle

In the Dumpster, more trash bags burst like popcorn kernels, showering Cade
and Mikey with radishes, potato peelings, and other compost material.
 Meg jabbed her tree branch into the nearest spirit’s chest. The branch stuck.
Glittering smoke began swirling down the length of the wood.
I thought the trees were parting for us, grudgingly opening a path straight out
of the woods.
Percy and I hit the ground as peaches shot around the orchard, ricocheting off
trees like eight balls, ripping through the nosoi’s cadaverous bodies. If I had been
standing up, I would have been killed, but Meg simply stood there, unfazed and
unhurt, as frozen dead fruit zinged around her.

- Excerpt from The Lost Tomb

Meg pulled out a soggy package of seeds from her red high-top. She caused the
chia to sprout in her cupped palm, and the tiny forest of green stalks pointed
towards the left-hand corridor.

- Excerpt from Olympus Academy

The goddess reached out her hands, the local grapevines entangling Arachne’s 8
legs, a forked sundew hoisting around her waist and lifting her upward.

- Excerpt from Camp Half Blood 3.0

Baily finds that quick-growing vines are wrapping around her legs, lifting her up
and pretty much enveloping her. She was suspended in the air! She then
proceeds to slam Bailey into the side of the hill with the vines.

- Excerpt from The Tower of Nero

The room turned green. A storm of allergens exploded from Meg’s body, as if
she’d released an entire season of
oak pollen in a single blast. Verdant dust coated the throne room – Nero, his
couch, his guards, his rugs, his
windows, his children. The demigods’ torch flames spluttered and died.
The dryads’ trees began to grow, roots breaking through their pots and anchoring
to the floor, new leaves
unfurling to replace the singed ones, branches thickening and stretching out,
threatening to entangle their demigod
 minders. I imagined her putting down her own roots, mooring herself
in place.

- Excerpt from The Tyrant’s Tomb

From one of her gardening-belt pouches, Meg pulled a fistful of seeds. She
scattered handfuls of seeds down the nearest pylon, causing them to explode into
bloom until she’d formed a latticework of plant matter all the way to the
ground.
The plants grabbed her,
passing her down the leafy latticework a few feet at a time like a bucket
brigade. At first she yelped and flailed her arms, but about halfway to the
ground, she shouted up to us, “NOT—THAT—BAD!”
I went next. It was bad. I screamed. I got flipped upside down. I
floundered for something to hold on to, but I was completely at the mercy of
creepers and ferns. It was like free-falling through a skyscraper-size bag of
leaves, if those leaves were still alive and very touchy-feely.
At the bottom, the plants set me down gently on the grass next to Reyna,
who looked like she’d been tarred and flowered.
Meg crouched. She put down one of her swords and
touched the grass with her fingertips. Her hand sent a ripple across the lawn
like a stone thrown in water.
“Something’s wrong with the soil here,” she announced. “The roots don’t
want to grow too deep.”
Hazel arched her eyebrows. “You can talk to plants.”
“It’s not really talking,” Meg said. “But yeah. Even the trees don’t like
this place. They’re trying to grow away from that carousel as fast as they
can.”
Meg touched the nearest wall. The ceiling shifted and cracked. I had a
fleeting image of us getting buried like Tarquin under several tons of rock—
which, in my present state of mind, seemed like an amusing way to die.
Instead, dozens of thickening tree roots wriggled their way through the
cracks, pushing apart the stones. The roots spiraled and wove themselves
together,
shoving aside the earth, letting in the dim glow of moonlight, until we found
ourselves at the base of a gently sloping chute (A root chute?) with
handholds and footholds for climbing.
- Excerpt from The Titan’s Curse
Vines—grape vines—had sprouted from the cracks between the stones of the
building. They were wrapping around Blackjack's legs, lashing down my ankles so we
couldn't move. The grape vines coiled tighter around me. The vines uncurled
around me.
Erupted into grape vines, which immediately began wrapping around the monster's
body, sprouting new leaves and clusters of green baby grapes that ripened in
seconds as the manticore shrieked, until he was engulfed in a huge mass of vines
leaves, and full clusters of purple grapes. Finally, the grapes stopped
shivering, and I had a feeling that somewhere inside there, the manticore was no
more.
- Excerpt from Hera’s heralds
As her fingers touched the edge, the metal loosened, unwrapping from the center
of her bicep down to her wrist. Sparks of green and bronze flew from her arm
as the bracelet transformed into a long green vine.
She wound back Ampeli, her vine lasso, swirling it in the air several times while
staring intensely at the centaur. On the third loop, she swung forward, aiming
for the neck. As Verdandi pulled back on the edge of her vine, she heard a loud
snapping noise.
She began crushing up various herbs and petals, creating a mixture that was a
pale green.
Then, she began to visualize her whole body peeling off into small pink rose
petals, collecting into a pile at her feet. In her mind, she watched the pile of
flowers drift over to Calli’s arm and begin to flake off her existence. Her fingers
sparkled as they transformed into shimmering midnight blue flower fragments.
The petals swirled together, catching a drift of air which sent them flying
through the dimension between space and time. All of this happened within
seconds. Melting into nothing more than petals, nothing more than something so
delicate it could be torn apart with two fingers. It was fearful, to know that
 the life of something so beautiful could be ripped to it's end within a mere
second.

The Day of the Triffids