Leafing out

Kudzu may have been the most successful plant in terms of fast growth that an evil overlord has released on the world, but it is eventually doomed to failure since nobody likes it. His mentor's evil abomination that will take over the world, mint, is far more successful - although the old man, if he hadn't been killed by some vigilantes with torches and pitchforks, would have objected to me calling all his strains by one single "mint."

Sadly, those evil geniuses working on the plant-based domination have to contend with smaller successes than the ones bent on hydrogen bombs or earthquakes tearing California off the continent (even if the latter seems to have a large number of sympathizers who keep smuggling his research notes out to satellite minion labs.) However, they are much longer lasting - while the ability to control the Vile Felines that stalk men didn't quite work out, we're all pretty pleased at "catnip" anyway, as the flowers will draw the 180-pound predators mindlessly into even the most obvious trap, and leave the wooded suburbs and exurban prairies safer for our children to play. (If the city dwellers are too afraid of guns to plant the traps, well, they're welcome to be hunted in their concrete jungles.)

Yeah, that one will work out for generations to come, a positive and lasting legacy for Dr. Menthe. Though personally, I'm even fonder of the chocolate mint - made, I'm told, to try to keep his Chief Assistant happier once a month. Whatever the actual reason (though I'm pretty sure a woman was involved in there somewhere), it's made the supply of something chocolate much steadier, and the female half of the population much easier to get along with - even when the kraken disrupt the flow of coffee and cacao northward.

Still wish he'd gotten a good coffee mint growing before he met his untimely end.