Plant Men of Barsoom

The Plant Men are a fictitious species existing in the Valley Dor region on the planet Barsoom ("i.e." Mars) in the John Carter series of books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. Ten to twelve feet tall, with short arms resembling an elephant's trunk, they are hairless except for their head and blue in color except for a broad band of white encircling a single protruding eye; the pupil and iris of which are dead white like the eyeball. The body, legs and feet are humanoid, but monstrously proportioned, the feet being fully one meter long, and very flat and broad. They possess a massive tail about six feet long, round where it meets the body and tapering to a flat, thin blade at the end, carried at right angles to the ground.The head, except for the blank face, is covered by a tangle of jet-black hair eight to ten inches in length with each hair the thickness of a large earthworm. There is no mouth in the face, and the nose is merely a ragged, gaping, inflamed circular hole in the center of the face, similar to an open wound. The Plant Men have a mouth in the palm of each hand, with which they feed on tender vegetation which they shear with their razor-sharp talons, or the blood of their victims. [ [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rgs/wmars-ISS.html Warlords of Mars: On the River Iss] ] After "the defiling blood of life has been drawn" from a human by the Plant Men, the flesh may be eaten by the Holy Therns, another Barsoomian race. [ [http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rgs/gmars-IV.html The Gods of Mars, Chapter 4] ]

References