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The Research Institute For Flora-based Invasion Defences

From September 1939 until April 1943, the now-abandoned railway station you can see here was home to a top secret military research facility. Its aim was to develop plants which could be used to help defend Britain against an attempted invasion by Germany. -

The most controversial aspect of this work was the collection of carnivorous plants from around the world which were then cross-bred and artificially selected in an attempt to produce ones capable of killing and eating any enemy soldiers who stumbled into them. The plan was to distribute such plants along British coastlines where they would act as both

a defence against, and a deterrent to, any invading forces.

The institute was closed after several of the plants it was developing escaped into the & surrounding streets where they consumed eight cats, five dogs, twelve drunken revellers and two small children, who really should have been tucked up safe in bed, before they were finally recaptured several weeks later. The plants created by the researchers were destroyed, but various wild-caught sundews, pitcher plants and venus flytraps were incorporated into the collection of the Glasgow Botanic Gardens where they remain to this day.
The writer John Wyndham worked in the facility for a short time in 1942 and he used this experience as the basis for his best-known novel "The Day of the Triffids". He even named the eponymous carnivorous plants in the book after the acronym for the institute where he'd once served.

This plaque was erected by the Glasgow Information and Kultural Identity Taskforce (GlalIKIT).

www.glaikit.scot