novel - Story about a colonized planet of butterflies that are telepathic plant life

All I remember about this story (possibly a novel or novella, possibly by Poul Anderson) is that the butterflies on this planet are plants. The author uses a clever latinate word based on “phyto” to name these forms. Also, no one realizes the plants are telepathic.

Contact with the plants may be forbidden or deadly; may have been the first of two stories set on the planet. Sorry the details are so vague—I am sure I read it only once.

Answer

This sounds like the novelette "Hunter, Come Home" (1963), by Richard McKenna. In this story, which deals with an attempt to terraform the planet by releasing the killer plant Thanasis to destroy the native ecosystem, the butterflies are called "phytozoons", or "phytos" for short, and are "mixed plant and animal". According to the bibliographical information in front of me, this story is a revised version of "The Night of Hoggy Darn" (1958), which I have not read. This might account for your remembering it as two stories.

Comments

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