Fertile Feet

There are a lot of ways to tell the White Hats from the Black Hats, but one pretty good rule of (green) thumb is that anyone who can bring flowers into existence just by stepping on soil is probably not evil. This person is not just a Friend to All Living Things but a potent force for good who is very likely a Messianic Archetype, or a Physical God or credible runner-up. At the very least, they have a Green Thumb, and in extreme cases are so powerful and so Good that their aura bleeds out into the world as a source of healing and growth.

The symbolism is pretty direct: person is so good and saintly that their presence actively manifests as natural beauty.

This trope can be subverted by switching flowers to thorns. The inverse is Walking Wasteland, where a character's presence causes withering and decay; see also Enemy to All Living Things. The character might not necessarily be bad, but that's a hard case to sell. Villains and neutral characters doing this are usually employing power over plants, possibly from being a Nature Spirit or Plant Person. This is also a halmark trait of a Fertility God.

The obvious Foil to Walking Wasteland or Evil Is Deathly Cold. Indeed, sometimes it can be impossible to tell whether the effect is the character's beneficence, or because their defeat of the Big Bad removes his influence, which has No Ontological Inertia. (Babies Ever After may act as a mundane equivalent, or coincide with this trope.) See also Hope Sprouts Eternal and World-Healing Wave. Contrast Cross-Melting Aura.

Not related to the giant Aurgelmir in Norse Mythology, whose feet mated with one another and gave him the son Thrudgelmir, the first of the frost giants.

Related to Earthy Barefoot Character. Compare Fertile Blood. Contrast Make Them Rot.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Belldandy does this in the "Fighting Wings" duology of the Ah! My Goddess anime. Lind grows a flower in the palm of her hand, showing that even badass halberd-wielding Valkyries have a softer side.
• Ayakashi Triangle has a variant with water: Two different times, Suzu's presence in a stream causes fish-like ayakashi to awake from their dormancy and start floating around her in the air.
• Horribly subverted in Berserk, when Ganishka takes on his final form, a tree-man the size of a mountain. He's clueless about his new form, and takes a few steps, noticing that wherever he goes, "red flowers" bloom in his footsteps (he's stomping on his own soldiers).
• Fake Saint of the Year: Discussed Trope, Gossip Evolution makes people think Ellize is like this. In reality, it takes a great amount of effort for her to terraform desolated regions using magic.
• In the opening of Healin' Good♡Pretty Cure, the heroines walk across a barren landscape with greenery growing behind them.
• JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Phantom Blood: Jonathan Joestar makes a tree blossom by leaning against it, simultaneously reminding us that his power level is off the scale and that he is plainly and unambiguously The Hero.
• Uro-sama from Kekkaishi grows moss wherever he walks, and donut trees wherever he sits.
• Given a dark twist King of Thorn: the thorny vines grow after Kasumi wherever she goes, despite her not wanting them to.
• Naruto displays this to a degree once he takes control of the Kyuubi's chakra. Even the artificial wood of Yamato's mokuton sprouts vibrant leaves in his presence. Subsequently weaponized when it's discovered that the life-giving power of the chakra can cause Zetsu clones to revert into trees.
• In One Piece, Admiral Ryokugyu has this as part of his powers after having eaten the Mori Mori no Mi (Woods-Woods Fruit). When he travels to Wano, the Polluted Wasteland that used to be Udon is filled with plant life as he walks towards the Flower Capital.
• In the opening sequence of Sands of Destruction, Morte, of all people, leaves a trail of flowers as she walks. Yes, the same Morte who wants to destroy the world. No, we don't know why, either.

Card Games

• Magic: The Gathering: The bogeyman Old Stickfingers has a dark version of this, as hoarfrost and mushrooms grow around his feet as he walks.
• One of the features of the World of Warcraft card game — Item cards. They can provide you rare items in-game. Two of them have said effect: Trinket "Path of Illidan" which leaves green fire footprints as you walk, and "Path of Zenarius (Cenarius?)" that make flowers (and grass) appear as you walk.

Comic Books

• In the French comic Bizu, Schnockbul is a hairy korrigan who leaves a trail of flowers (or lily pads if he walks in water) wherever he goes. If he stands still on the same spot, the flowers keep growing around him.
• In an early issue of The Books of Magic, the protagonist has just defeated the Manticore, the secret plague that's been turning the Fairy world into a desert but has been badly wounded in the process. His blood is chock-full of magic, though, so even as he's bleeding out stumbling around, his blood droplets restore plant life to the world.
• In Meridian, Sephie falls from a flying ship at high altitude and lands in a toxic wasteland, making a human-shaped crater around which plants start to grow.
• Shalla Bal in one Silver Surfer story. She is able to return life to their homeworld after the Surfer infuses her with some of his cosmic power.
• In Trinity (2008), the transformed Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman cause life to return to Europe.
• Wonder Woman and the Star Riders: Star Lily is shown with flowers sprouting around her feet on the cover and is known to have a variation of plant control, however she spends the entire comic working to regain her stolen magic gem alongside the other Star Riders and gets no chance to use said powers since the chase takes place in the air and the battle takes place over the ocean.

Fan Works

• In the Discworld of A.A. Pessimal, Apricity Brabble is a young Lancre witch who is more at home with the long slow cycles of green growing things than she is with people. She gives creative thought to the interplay between the anthropomorphic personalities of the Wintersmith and the Summer Lady, and wonders where the two intermediate seasons of Spring, when you plant seeds, and Autumn, when you harvest the crop, fit into the scheme of things. A Witch, in tune with the cycles of life and of plant growth, finds this thought can turn her into an avatar of both. She discovers she can do the fertile feet thing — but only with things like oats, barley, wheat and spelt. Later on, Apricity discovers that the Wintersmith and the Summer Lady^note or, more accurately, the larger Anthropomorphic Principles of which they are but partial manifestations have heard about her ideas concerning Spring and Autumn. Apricity then becomes, for as long as it needs, the Avatar of Spring and is tasked with running through the world, scattering seeds and heralding the Summer. The large hint is dropped that she will need to do it all again in six months' time, this time as Autumn.
• Hope for the Heartless: Avalina, the unassuming farmgirl, has an extraordinarily strong aura of life. During the months she's forced to live in the Horned King's castle, life starts to brew in the lich's barren lands, culminating in an entire forest with animal life. She also brings out positive sensations in the Horned King to the point that his heart comes back to life after centuries of being dormant, and his aura is no longer deadly.
• RainbowDoubleDash's Lunaverse: This is part of earth pony magic. In addition to flowing through their bodies to grant Super-Strength and enhanced durability and endurance, earth pony magic also leaks out their hooves to infuse the ground with fertility. It's most prominent for those earth ponies who are actually farmers, but every earth pony in a town contributes to the fertility of its farms through their magic. It's this effect that allows Equestrian agriculture to be so insanely productive for the general tech level.
• In This Gonna Be Good, Fred and George use a prank powder to temporarily make flowers spring up wherever Harri steps, as part of the lead-up to Valentine's Day.
• Triptych Continuum: This is part of earth pony magic, and is basically the only way that ponies know how to farm, relying on Earth Ponies to make the land able to support farming, with what's termed the "Cornucopia Effect".
• In Walking Alone, Jareth mentions a dream where Harry was walking through ruins with flowers sprouting up in his wake, which represents how their relationship is healing Jareth's cold heart.

Films — Animation

• In Barbie in the Nutcracker, Clara walks through a snowy landscape, and wherever her feet step, the snow and ice melts and little purple flowers bloom in the melted footprints. She doesn't notice.

• Epic (2013): Queen Tara can grow plants just by waving her hand over a patch of dirt, including areas infected with rot or otherwise depleted. Plants don't pop up in her footsteps, but plants do move underneath her to act as stepping-stones as needed. This power presumably passes from queen to queen.

• This happens in Kirikou and the Sorceress when Kirikou pulls out Karaba's magical thorn from her back, automatically making her good and reverting her Walking Wasteland nature so the plants and flowers grow back prettier than before.

• In Mavka: The Forest Song, flowers sometimes grow where Mavka (the soul of the forest) walks.
• An unusual example occurs in the "Stink Bomb" segment of Memories. The main character emits a chemical that causes flowers to bloom all around him... while also killing all animal life. He is a neutral character who is utterly unaware that he is even the cause of this.
• In Pokémon 3, at first it seems that the illusory Entei is making crystals grow from the ground wherever he steps. The plot of the movie involves the Pokémon Unown causing similar crystals to grow, and since they created Entei, it serves to connect the two together. It becomes obvious that the Unown can only affect reality within an area defined by the crystal growth. Hence, Entei isn't making crystals grow wherever he steps; instead, the Unown are making crystals grow so Entei can step on them.
• Shishigami from Princess Mononoke. It should be noted that the Shishigami doesn't give just life but both life and death — and the plants that spring up from its footsteps immediately die and rot away. It seems to make plants go through their life cycle faster. However, when the Shishigami is decapitated, his headless and still-moving body turns into a Walking Wasteland.
• In Yellow Submarine, The Beatles leave a trail of psychedelic foliage behind them during the "Nowhere Man" number. Later, they restore color to Pepperland and repair damaged statues and plants with a chorus of "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". Jeremy Hillary Boob gets into the act by covering the Boss Meanie with flowers, bringing about his Heel–Face Turn.

Films — Live-Action

• Justified in Avatar; pressure causes Pandora's bioluminescent plant life to glow underfoot, but not change in any other way. It helps that it's there more for Scenery Porn than anything else.
• Anneke in The Day the Earth Froze briefly causes flowers to bloom in her wake when she first met Lemmenkainen and again when Lemmenkainen and Ilmarinen rescue her from the witch Louhi. Louhi and her imps then go on a frenzy of stomping the flowers, because (being evil and all) she hates anything beautiful.
• In Excalibur, after Arthur's wound is healed by the Holy Grail, the flora of the land that fell sick when he did grows again.
• In Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), Behemoth, the mammoth-like Titan, is said to have restored the growth of plant life in its wake, due to its radioactive emissions stimulating their growth.

• Newborn baby Siddhartha Gautama in Little Buddha is shown taking his first steps with lotus blossoms springing up behind him in every footprint.
• In Pan's Labyrinth, after Ofelia dies after refusing to harm her half-brother, the dead tree whose parasitic frog she removed has a single, beautiful flower bloom on it where she briefly touched it. This is appropriate considering her actions allowed her reentry into the fairy kingdom, "redeeming" her soul from base humanity and making her something close to a saint. Director commentary runs to the effect of "Even if all the effect she had on the world was the blooming of a single flower on a dead tree, then her life had meaning."

Literature

• A variation occurs with the hands of Green Men in 100 Cupboards: touching soil with the scar gained when they come into their powers can cause their bonded plant to grow. Inexperienced hero Henry has trouble with this, at one point pinning his arm to the ground with a profusion of dandelions while trying to escape pursuit, while the older Monmouth has much more control.

• In Ann's Spring by Daniel Curley, Mother Nature has her hands full with tornadoes and hurricanes, so she asks her daughter Ann to get spring started for her. Ann begins the task, assisted by her baby brother Bob. You can always tell where they've been. As they walk through the fields and yards, innumerable dandelions spring up in their wake.
• Flowers supposedly sprang up behind the titular saint when he visited a novice in A Canticle for Leibowitz, but it's just rumor distorting an encounter with the Wandering Jew.
• In Zilpha Keatley Snyder's novel The Changeling, Martha and Ivy invent a fantasy kingdom of Tree People with pale green skin and dark green hair in which flowers grow naturally. (The Tree People later developed into Snyder's Green-Sky Trilogy and, eventually, the Below the Root video game.)
• The Circle Opens: Briar Moss uses this in Street Magic when he has a very rational and very controlled Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Briar has Green Thumb in ass-kicking, so when he has enough, he uncorks his power and seeds and plant-based material come to live and sprout in his wake. In broad daylight. Most mages make an effort to fit into normal society, so seeing one obviously not making the effort was a great way to encourage people to get out of his way.
• In Ian McDonald's Desolation Road, there's a green evolved human from the future. Grass grows in the desert in his footsteps.
• Discworld:
  • In Pyramids, when Pteppic's father dies, making him a divine emperor, his friends notice grass growing from the city pavement wherever he steps, a wooden table starts budding, and all the grain in a bakery attempts to burst into life.
  • Wintersmith is the Trope Namer; it was called this (and the Latinized "Ped Fecundis") when Tiffany Aching developed it. Of course, this being Discworld, it is played for laughs.
  • A related thing happens to junior witch Magrat Garlick in Wyrd Sisters. (Magrat is youngest witch, the Maiden of the trio, a role associated with Spring and fertility.) Faced with the conundrum of a locked and unopenable heavy oak door, she lays a hand on it, concentrates, and restores life force to the wood causing it to "remember when it was a tree" and to grow, put forth leaves, and bear fruit with acorns, thus causing the wood to cease being a door and burst its hinges. Granny Weatherwax, the "crone" of the triad, a role associated with Death and Winter, frankly admits she'd have gone about it differently by attacking the stone of the surrounding wall.
• The Dresden Files:
  • Summer Knight, the Summer Lady, the youngest of the three queens of the Summer Court of fairies has this quality. Subverted when it turns out that she's become a Well-Intentioned Extremist and is attempting to destroy the balance between the two fairy courts.
  • In Proven Guilty, the Summer Lady turns wooden flowers into real ones by passing by. Whereupon the Winter Lady passes by and blights them again.
• Flowers are said to have sprung up in the wake of Blessed Elua in Kushiel's Legacy.
• In Garrison Keillor's Lake Wobegon Days, scholarly philosopher Leon Winkler seems to have a posthumous influence on the lush corn that brother Roman absentmindedly planted over his grave.
• In Margaret Ball's Lost in Translation, some of the most important people on an alternate-universe version of Earth are Landwalkers, who can make plants healthy simply by walking past them.
• When Aslan creates Narnia in The Magician's Nephew, grass spreads out from his feet across the bare earth like a wave.

• Father Thames from the Rivers of London series has Fertile Urine, such that lush wildflowers blossom where he takes a leak.
• The unicorns do this in The Secret Country, although they are creatures of capricious morality. One of the children calls the trail of blossoms "unicorn footprints" and her sarcastic brother immediately redubs them "fewmets".
• The cover of P.J. Hoover's book Solstice depicts the main character standing atop lush grass whilst surrounded all around by dry and desolate turf, hinting to The Reveal later on that she is the amnesiac Greek goddess Persephone. In accordance with Greek mythology, her absence from Hades and the Underworld is the cause of the titular never-ending summer.
• Invoked in G. K. Chesterton's Tales of the Long Bow:
  "It's all very well to be fond of England; but a man who wants to help England mustn't let the grass grow under his feet."
  "And that's just what I want to do," answered Hood. "That's exactly what even your poor tired people in big towns really want to do. When a wretched clerk walks down Threadneedle Street, wouldn't he really be delighted if he could look down and see the grass growing under his feet; a magic green carpet in the middle of the pavement? It would be like a fairy-tale."
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • In The Lord of the Rings, King Théoden's horse does this to its grave. The horse was buried where he was killed, and grass grew lushly over the grave (in contrast to the Nazgûl Giant Flyer's death-spot, which remained forever barren). This also happens with other burial sites, with those of evil beings staying barren.
  • The Elven High King Fingolfin:
    ...and Fingolfin unfurled his blue and silver banners, and blew his horns, and flowers sprang beneath his marching feet, and the ages of the stars were ended.

• In The Traitor Son Cycle, when goddess/dragoness Tar manifests, she leaves behind blossoming flowers and grass, even if it's in a dark, damp prison cell.
• Hannah, protagonist of Meredith Ann Pierce's Treasure at the Heart of the Tanglewood, grows plants appropriate to the season — which usually seem to end up being useful — in her hair. She also, as it turns out, brings the seasons with her when she travels, including flowers in spring, grains in summer, and falling leaves in autumn. Surprisingly enough, she turns out to be the girl whom both the Big Good and the primary antagonist are after.
• Weaveworld has two examples of this. The first plays the trope straight, with a temple so chock-full of magic that any disturbances (such as walking through it) sprouts a lush undergrowth. The second is an inversion, with a Garden of Eden-like setting covered in flora, which withers away and turns to sand when someone walks through it.
• The Wheel of Time:
  • At the end of The Eye of the World, we meet the Green Man. The Green Man keeps a chunk of earth free from the blight with his power to make things grow. While he is dying, he tackles one of the Forsaken and makes a giant tree grow out of the forsaken's chest in a matter of minutes. It is also mentioned in backstory that the Green Man's people, the Nym, caused plants to grow where they walked.
  • This ability is also available to anyone who can channel (whether good or evil) and knows the necessary Geometric Magic.
  • At the beginning of Towers of Midnight, Rand descends from Dragonmount after resolving his internal conflict and makes an entire orchard of apples, which had been shriveled by the Dark One's touch, bloom instantly. Later, he makes bitter tea turn fresh just by entering the same room. It gets to the point in the book where virtually everyone can tell when Rand is near, simply because the sun starts shining, and everything starts blooming like there's no tomorrow (though this is purposely excluded in a capital city ruled by one of his lovers).
  • All of this is because of the prophecy stating that the Land is one with the Dragon. The spoilage of previous books is because of him moving toward the darkness.
  • When Rand approaches the Field of Merrilor in the final book, the grass greens as he walks along, and he extends the effect to the entire field. Later, he uses the same effect to impress the Seanchan empress while his regular magic is blocked. It turns out this is not his fate-warping power at work, but the result of him humming a song of growing under his breath.
• In Donald Alexander Mackenzie's Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend (drawing on Celtic Mythology), Bride's influence produces this whenever Beira, queen of the winter, is unable to control her.
  Father Winter: If Beira scolds you, give her these flowers, and if she asks where you found them, tell her that they came from the green rustling fir-woods. Tell her also that the cress is springing up on the banks of streams, and that the new grass has begun to shoot up in the fields.

Music Videos

• In the video of Linkin Park's "In the End", Mike Shinoda leaves a trail of growing grass.
• The end of Nana Mizuki's "Massive Wonders" music video has the Phlebotinum Rebel featured therein leaving a trail of flowers where she walks.

Myths & Religion

• The newborn Buddha is sometimes said to have left lotuses in his footsteps when he walked after birth.
• Christianity:
  • There is at least one legend that garlic derives its anti-vampire properties from the fact that it first sprouted in Satan's footsteps. This is not in The Bible. Traditionally, vampires were corpses possessed by demons; it reminds them if their host is destroyed, they will return to Hell.
  • The Christian hymn "Morning Has Broken", written by prolific children's author Eleanor Farjeon (you've heard a popular version by Cat Stevens), says that plants sprang into existence when God walked in the Garden of Eden.
  • In the old German Christian hymn "Maria durch ein Dornwald ging" ("Mary Walked Through a Wood of Thorns", first printed in 1850), St. Mary, being pregnant with Jesus, walks through a wood of thorn trees which have borne no leaves for seven years. At Mary's passing, the thorn trees bear roses.
  • The Christmas carol "Good King Wenceslas" has a variation where the ground gets so warm that grass grows in the middle of winter.
  • It's also a pretty common motif in psalms. There is one Swedish example of God's footsteps not only bringing flowers but also overflowing with fat. Food wasn't as plentiful back then.
• Classical Mythology:
  • This is a common attribute of Demeter/Ceres, the Grain Mother, and to her daughter, Persephone, bringer of springtime. (When Persephone goes into the Underworld, it's another story.)
  • Also by Medusa and Cerberus, neither of whom were noted for their kindness. When Perseus was bringing Medusa's head back to Greece, her blood continually soaked through the bag he was carrying it in and caused oases to form wherever they landed. When Heracles brought Cerberus out of Tartarus as part of his last Labor, Cerberus began howling in rage and his drool caused the plant commonly known as Wolfsbane to blossom wherever it hit the soil.
• In "The Fairy Quite Contrary", the good fairy Svelta blesses the newborn Princess Irena with the gift that wherever she goes, flowers will bloom and trees bear ripe fruit.

• Judaism: There is a Yiddish folktale about two girls, a kind one and a mean one. The kind one received a blessing that caused roses to spring up where she walked, and the mean girl got a curse that made nettles spring up in her footsteps. This is Aarne-Thompson 480, and has many variations all over the world.
• In the legend of King Arthur and the Holy Grail, the sickness of the king poisons the land, and when the king is healed, the flowers grow again. The movie Excalibur is a particularly vivid portrayal of this legend.
• Said of Olwen, of the Mabinogion:
  Four white trefoils sprung up wherever she trod.
• In the Irish fairy tale "The Wooing of Olwen", white 3-leaf clovers grow wherever Olwen steps.

Tabletop Games

• Changeling: The Lost:
  • The Flowering kith of Fairest cause flowers to spring wherever they step... though it takes months for them to do so in the real world, while in Arcadia and the Hedge it's instantaneous.
  • Same thing with the Spring Court and their Mantle. At low levels, those close to them feel a gentle, fragrant breeze, but at high levels, plants tend to grow out of the sidewalk if they stick around long enough.
• Exalted:
  • Benediction of Archgenesis, a Solar Circle Sorcery spell, is basically this. However, unlike most examples, you actually have to cut your feet and trail the blood around the area you want blessed with life.
  • There's also the Moon And Earth Blessing from the Ink Monkeys, a Lunar Charm that allows them to do the same, on a smaller scale. On the other hand, they can do it as a dramatic action, it doesn't require anywhere near as much essence much less a massive blood sacrifice, and they can do it any day of the year rather than just on the first day of the first month.
  • In Return of the Scarlet Empress, Gaia's return to Creation includes this trope.
• Dungeons & Dragons:
  • Pathfinder: One of the hierophant abilities introduced in Mythic Origins, Flowers in Your Footsteps, allows a character to radiate a magical aura that greatly speeds and enhances plant growth within sixty feet of them, following them as they move around.
  • Planescape: The T'uen-Rin is a planar being related to Kirin, with powerful spellcasting abilities. Flowers quickly grow wherever their hooves touch the earth.
• The Quintessential Temptress has this as an option for the Avatar of Love prestige class, once they get the Lover's Gift class feature. It's listed as the Spring Flowers Gift and is the only one of the Lover's Gifts that doesn't actually do anything inherently useful.
• After he becomes the Avatar of Life Magic, Lwan Eddington of Tech Infantry tends to have plants and animals spontaneously spring up around him wherever he goes. He even manages to create an entire fertile region on an asteroid-blasted Earth.
• The Unofficial Hollow Knight RPG: Small plants constantly sprout in the footsteps of bugs on the Path of the Bloom, which actually has the mechanical benefit of letting them create small quantities of edible plant matter when they rest.
• Warhammer:
  • Aekold Hellbrass caused plants to grow wherever he went. Subverted in that he was a champion of chaos, serving Tzeentch, the god of mutation, and nothing like a Friend to All Living Things. His presence was actually screwing up the laws of nature, the excessive life energy radiating from his body as the result of an unusual mutation.
  • The High Elves have Alarielle the Radiant, Everqueen of Averlorn. Her miniature depicts her barefoot, with roses creeping at her feet as she steps on a discarded piece of armor. When she returns as the Goddess of Life Magic in the sequel game Warhammer: Age of Sigmar, Alarielle has had this ability turned up a notch with even the Wardroth Beetle she rides into battle sprouting shoots and fungus from its carapace.
  • According to popular myth in the Empire, life came to the barren world as Rhya the mother goddess first walked through it, causing grasses, flowers and fruit to grow around her feet and animals to climb from the soil as she passed.

Video Games

• Age of Mythology: In a similar vein to this trope, Atlantean civilizations worshiping Gaia in the "Titans" expansion will have lush greenery grow outward from their buildings, which will prevent enemy civilizations from building too close by.
• Age of Wonders:
  • The most powerful elven unit, the Nature Elemental, has a "Path of Life" special ability that transforms the grounds it walks upon into the forest/grass terrain. It also has the Frost Queen (Path of Frost) and the Undead Reaper (Path of Decay).
  • While no unit in the sequel directly gains the ability, the druids can have it with a gold medal, and it's still available as an item property. Wizards with at least one Light Sphere can have a similar magic effect active in their domain that slowly restores terrain.
  • Death wizards invert this: they have abilities that turn their domains into blasted wastelands. Of course, all of the elemental wizards can turn their domains into an embodiment of their element: for example, air wizards can turn verdant grasslands into frost-bitten tundras, and freeze over rivers and even the ocean.
• Battle Realms: Gaihla has these, and you can exploit the game's unique take with Idle Animation and put her near your rice fields to help them grow faster. It's especially helpful in snowy stages.
• Bayonetta:
  • Bayonetta leaves a small trail of black plants behind her whenever she's running in panther form.
  • The presence of Angels causes flowers to grow (The Power of the Sun and all that), making a rare villainous example.
• In Black & White, made by the same people who later made Fable, a very Good Creature has the same effect. Conversely, a very Evil Creature leaves smoldering footprints.
• Among the last special effects created for City of Heroes characters was this, released at the same time as the Nature Affinity powerset (a flower and tree-themed heal/buff set which required some of the same coding and art).
• Played with in de Blob. Though he lacks feet, Blob colors any ground he rolls over, including grass and flowers. Bumping into trees colors them as well, though this costs paint points.
• When you're maxed out good in Fable, a halo appears over your head and flowers and butterflies also randomly show up when you stand still. As soon as you move, the effect disappears.
• Merlin has this ability in Fate/Grand Order. Besides it being a visual effect in gameplay as flowers blossom and wilt in the area around him, it's key to stopping the Arc Villain of the game's seventh chapter as all of Tiamat's mud is considered one entity and he effectively neutralizes it by merely taking one step on it, instantaneously causing flowers to grow all over the Chaos Tide and halting its advance.
• In Haven (2020)'s Playable Epilogue following the "Don't look back" ending, Yu and Kay upgrade their Hover Boots to produce trails of flowers.
• Horizon Forbidden West: The Plowhorns that the Utaru worship are essentially walking tractors; tilling the soil and planting fast-growing seeds behind them. There's even a common Utaru blessing: "May the land bloom in your steps."
• A variant in Zyra, the Rise of the Thorns from League of Legends — while she doesn't generate plant matter under her feet as she walks, her new passive "Garden of Thorns" causes her to spontaneously spawn seed pods randomly around her every few seconds, which she can cause to bloom into aggressive thorn spitters or vine lashers with her offensive spells.
• Mega Man Battle Network has an odd example in its Karma Meter games (4 and 5): if MegaMan is fully in Light mode, he can erase DarkHoles just by stepping on them. Conversely, if he uses certain DarkChips,^note DarkSpread (BN4) or DarkDrill (BN5) he'll start creating poison panels where he walks. (The latter is also one of the possible punishments for stuffing his NaviCust without following the rules.)
• Ōkami:
  • Amaterasu. The faster she runs, the more lush the foliage, although it disappears just as quickly as it sprouts up. In water, Amaterasu leaves a trail of lily pads behind her; in midair, a flurry of autumn leaves. This passive ability is amplified after gaining the Growth Brush technique. The flowers in her wake are already bloomed, and at full speed, the flowers turn gold.
  • The sequel, Ōkamiden, stars Chibiterasu, who has the same power.
  • Amaterasu even does this in Marvel vs. Capcom 3, while running up Super-Skrull's outstretched arm. With Viewtiful Joe riding her, yet!
• In Oracle of Tao, Ambrosia, after becoming the Oracle, has a massive shadow beneath her feet (probably representing that her dark half is now part of her), and grows massive amounts of some generic weed, most likely Common Plantain◊. Also, in flashbacks (since this power was originally hers), she as a kid grew tiny sprouts inside her shadow when she moved.

• Pikmin Bloom: When blooming, flowers spawn around the player's feet as they walk, leaving a trail wherever they go.
• In Plants vs. Zombies, there is a code that makes daisies appear when a zombie dies.
• Pokémon: It's not uncommon for Grass-type Pokémon and moves to invoke this.
  • Pokémon Diamond and Pearl Floraroma town in Sinnoh has a legend that Shaymin turned the area from a wasteland into a garden. They raise berries and Gracidea flowers (which grant Shaymin new abilities) in gratitude for this.
  • Pokémon Gold and Silver: Suicune has the power to purify water that it steps on, in a related trope.
  • Pokémon Black and White: Landorus doesn't have actual feet, but can emit energy from his tail that immensely fertilizes barren land.
  • Pokémon Ranger: Using a Grass Assist causes grass and flowers to sprout from your Capture Line.
• [PROTOTYPE]:
  • Elizabeth Greene. She even has the added bonus of being a beautiful young woman with unearthly powers and bare feet, nicknamed MOTHER. It just happens that she doesn't spread nice benevolent things like flowers or plants. Instead, wherever she goes, the infection follows her in a trail of mutagenic, fleshy, diseased tendrils and pustules — even on steel, concrete, or glass.
  • Alex Mercer himself gets in on the act: his health regeneration powers are so potent that his stepping into the residue of the Supreme Hunter he just killed allows it to come back to life.

• The Sims 3: Plantsims will leave behind a trail of grass and flowers when walking.
• Super Mario Bros.:
  • In Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, plants start growing where Mario and Luigi walk in Dreamy Somnom Woods.
  • In Super Mario Galaxy 2, one of the secret stars in the Supermassive Galaxy has Mario doing this. You have to cover the entire planet with flowers to get a star.
• Terraria lets you do this yourself with the Flower Boots, an accessory that when worn, allows you to grow flowers when you walk on grassy dirt.
• Thief: Viktoria leaves moss at her touch until she shows her true form as a dryad, at which point creeping vines sprout from around her feet and grow in her wake.
• Total War:
  • Alarielle the Radiant from Total War: Warhammer II has this as a game mechanic: Every settlement she visits gets a Status Buff improving its growth and public order for several turns. That's in addition to having this as a graphic on the battlefield.
  • In Total War: Warhammer III, both Aekold Helbrass and the Mutalith Vortex Beast have an Evil Counterpart graphic of growing Tzeenchian spikey tentacles behind them as they walk.
• Touhou Project:
  • According to her official profile, Lily White can make flowers bloom with her mere presence, being the embodiment of spring and all. However, the actual Youkai of flowers, Yuka Kazami, is less Friend to All Living Things and more Ax-Crazy.
  • The Mishaguji (snake gods under Suwako's control) are said to make grain sprout in their wake. Of course, they're curse gods, so they're more famous for taking it in the other direction and making the land barren. Akyuu describes it as blessings and curses being two sides of the same coin.
• World of Warcraft:
  • Herbalists have something similar to this. They get a healing move that, when used, causes flowers and plants to spring up around them.
  • The Night Elf Ancients (living trees that are used as production buildings in Warcraft III) apparently have healing roots, as they cleanse the undead Blight around them when they are planted in it.
  • The red dragons, who are guardians of the Aspect of Life, have fertile breath — flowers spring up from where they breathe flame, most notably and poignantly at Angrathar. Some seem to have this trope exactly, such as Surristrasz and his drakes at Amber Ledge, who are surrounded by a patch of grass and flowers upon otherwise barren rock.
  • Also of note is Illidan's inversion in Warcraft III: When he moves, his footprints leave fire.

Webcomics

• Aurora (2019): When Alinua first appears, plants grow wherever she steps.
• Battlepug: The governor's daughter has the power to make plants (flowers or plant tentacles) grow in her vicinity — and one @#$%load of a vocabulary. Really, if she chain-swears, expect a large number of hostile plants.

• The Hob from Dresden Codak, although they're apparently cybernetically-enhanced flowers.
• Fifteen Minds: In Blue Moon Blossom, when the rabbit spirit is crumbling away, dark blue flowers in a shade of blue seen nowhere else bloom underneath it as it flies.

• In MSF High, growing plantlife is actually their main ability of the Legion; they are natural terraformers.

Western Animation

• Captain Planet and the Planeteers: Gaia leaves trails of flowers in her footsteps whenever she appears in the human world.
• Generator Rex: Van Kleiss can do this, despite being the Big Bad. However, it only works in the area around his castle, which is infused with nanites that he controls. He may arguably have been invoking the trope at the time to get Rex to let his guard down.
• Hercules: The Animated Series: Aphrodite leaves small flowers wherever she walks. Mind you, they quickly disappear again.
• Jimmy Two-Shoes: The second season opening depicts Jimmy as being able to turn anything he touches into a happy, beautiful thing. He never has this power in the show, though.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: In "Campfire Tales", Rarity tells the legend of the unicorn sorceress Mistmane, who leaves a trail of flowers behind as she wanders Equestria to spread beauty everywhere.
• The Owl House: Played for Drama in the episode "For the Future". Plants start sprouting around Willow's feet because her attempts to repress her own issues and act as The Reliable One for her friends is causing her magic to go haywire. Eventually, it gets so bad that she, Gus, and Hunter are ensnared in a tomb of vines that only go away when Gus and Hunter convince her to stop holding in her pain.

Real Life

• While this trope in its literal sense isn't possible in real life, it is perfectly possible for humans to disperse seeds that then germinate into healthy plants simply by walking around, thanks to the tread on the soles of shoes, which can hold seeds for long distances, coming loose in a suitable location to grow.
• Henrik Wergeland due to Memetic Mutation. In 1937, Norwegian painter Reidar Aulie painted him on his horse in par with this trope, where he is seen dropping seeds of flowers behind him for children to pick it up. At the same time, poet Ingeborg Refling Hagen wrote a poem, stating that "when seeds sprouts in our footsteps, it is the growth of Wergeland´s thoughts" (in other words, each and every one can fill the trope when we follow his example).

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