Vegetation

Synopsis

A solar system millions of miles away explodes sending its debris scattering through out the universe. One lone meteor tumbles towards earth carrying a mysterious orange glowing substance. The meteor enters the earth’s atmosphere in a ball of fire reducing itself to the size of a golf ball when it hit the earth. It buries itself a the base of a tree sitting in front of the Pyramid Building in the financial district of San Francisco. Soon an alien-looking plant sprouts up from the ground and rapidly yet unassumingly rapidly grows, taking over the tree. The next evening, in the dark, a young couple stops under the tree as they romantically kiss. The woman leans against the alien tree and is pulled onto its trunk by the tree’s vines and devoured. The young man attempts to save his lover but is also attacked by the vines that pull him upward into tree and disappears. The next morning a woman walking her dog witnesses the tree consume her dog when the dog urinates on the tree.

A young man, Steven Caldwell, on his way to work in the Pyramid Building comes across the commotion between the old woman and the police. Steven watches as the tree attacks a police officer and then all hell breaks loose. The alien tree’s terrifying vines begins to attack everything around it, flipping police cars and pulling people into its man-eating trunk. As things around the tree calm down, what no one sees is the vines enter the building’s underground garage through the air vents. Steven calls his estranged wife, Allison, who is a botanist at the Hall of Flowers.

Allison and her assistant race over to the Pyramid Building to see if they can figure out what this plant is. Upon their arrival Allison, Steven, the police and her assistant are confronted with a woman that was attacked in the garage. Steven decides that he must warn the people in the building and heads up the elevator to the other floors. In the meantime, Allison and the police are met with the alien plant that now has taken over the stairways as it rises up from the garage. The police order the evacuation of the main floor; leaving Steven and the rest of the people in the floors above to fight for their own survival.

The Mayor orders in a reliable tree removal company, Tank’s Tree Army headed by “Tank” to take on the alien tree outside. Tank is an ex-marine that fought in the Vietnam War. He and his men take on the alien plant with somewhat humorous unsuccessful results as Allison returns to lab to test some of the plant’s samples.

Steven attempts to move the people in the building upward and away from the danger. An attack on the fleeing people in the stairway leads Steven downward to save a woman trapped among the plant’s branches and vines.

Allison and her assist learn that the plant can react to noise and grows more rapidly with heat. Allison is stunned while watching the live news coverage notice Tank’s men plan to burn the plant down with flamethrowers. She rushes back to the scene to warn the authorities that the fire will only make the plant grow faster and jeopardizing Steven and the people in the building survival.

Steven and the woman attempt to find a different way up to the safety of another floor as they slowly make their way through the maze of vines and branches that have taken over the floor. They discover the plants heart pulsating on the floor surrounded by numerous mysterious clear blossoms. The woman scream’s causes the plant to devour her and she ends up entombed in one of the clear blossoms. Steven now terrified runs for his life and escapes upward through the elevator shaft.

Allison and her assistant return to the Hall of Flowers only to find that her lab has been burned to the ground with no signs of the samples they were testing. They realize that the plant samples have grown and have moved to the surrounding foliage and trees. The battle now takes on two fronts as everyone battles to find what can kill this terror. Exciting and horrifying scenes unfold as San Francisco tries to learn the secret that can stop this menace.