Floral Armageddon

You know that the plants are becoming serious about taking over the planet when they start getting their filing organised. Or at least, that's what plant watcher and conspiracy theorist Davy Boner believes. According to Boner, the first indications of floral Armageddon will not be a string of unexplained deaths on allotments or the silent encroachment of murderous creeping vines upon our towns and cities. It will be a rush to purchase receipt books, box files and index cards.

"The secret of any good uprising is organisation," says Boner, a junior management assistant for a leading supermarket chain. "And the secret of organisation is administration. Where would Napoleon have been without his bar charts? Would we still remember Alexander the Great if he hadn't been able to follow a flow diagram? And what about Genghis Khan? How would any of his subjects have known they had been conquered had he not issued them with a receipt?"

Mr Boner says that he first noticed that trouble was brewing when he witnessed a daffodil trying to buy a wall planner in Staples. "It's not something that you see very often," he admits. "So it rapidly struck me as odd. Afterwards, when I stepped outside, I saw a bunch of tulips behaving very suspiciously and so I leapt to the only reasonable conclusion that there was."

Of course, sceptics might point out an obvious flaw in Mr Boner's reasoning, namely that paper filing systems would seem to an unlikely choice in a world where most administrative tasks are computerised. Mr Boner, of course, has an answer.

"When was the last time you saw a cauliflower use a PC?" he asks, quite reasonably. "Exactly. Most plant life tends to eschew modern technology. Some hedges have been known to do their shopping online, and you might occasionally see the odd sapling on Facebook, but for the most part they pretty much leave that stuff alone."

For the time being at least it seems that there is no need to worry. Mr Boner believes that we are not in any immediate danger, but he is nevertheless keeping a careful watch on his vegetable patch and will alert us at the first sign of unrest. That is, he will unless his carrots get him first.