Botanica (BM)
- Botanica is a Maximal from the Beast Machines portion of the Beast Era.
The Transformers have taken on myriad alternate forms over the years, but Botanica remains unique: she transforms into a mobile alien plant creature. She is competent and powerful, as well as a bit mystical, and has a strong connection to the planet and an affinity for growing things. A scientist first and foremost, she can be fastidious and fussy in her dedication to her work — sometimes to the point of overlooking the things that matter most.
Pre-production name: Binary
Fiction
Beast Machines
- Voice actor: Kathleen Barr (US), Atsuko Tanaka (Japan)
Botanica captained the same sort of exploration mission that the Axalon originally undertook. Landing on a planet dominated by plant life, including the mobile carnivorous variety, her crew adopted forms based upon them.
When they received Megatron's fake distress signal, she returned to Cybertron alone, and was shot down. She was apparently driven temporarily mad (and trapped in plant-creature mode) by Megatron's virus and did not regain her sanity until Optimus Primal reformatted her to be technorganic. She then joined with Primal's team to help save Cybertron, with a particular focus on their technorganic orchard. Home Soil
However, her focus on the orchard was initially all she did. Botanica didn't help the Maximals in fighting the Vehcions, arguing that the more they fought Megatron, the more they became like Megatron. Although Cheetor and Blackarachnia resented this, Primal accepted her reasons, and also reminded his team that they were more than enough to fight Megatron and Thrust. However, Botanica soon recieved a vision from the Matrix, which showed her how much pain Cybertron was in. Botanica abandoned her pacifism and joined in the fight, saving the Maximals from a trap Obsidian and Strika had formed. Sparkwar Part 1: The Strike
Despite initial dislike, Botanica eventually formed a romantic relationship with Rattrap.
Trivia
- Botanica is a rarity, in that she was a major recurring heroic character in a Transformers television show, but was apparently never intended to have a toy.
- Assuming the Transformer seen in silhouette in the flashback in Home Soil is also Botanica, she remains the only plant-based Transformer ever seen in the canon. She states the other members of her crew also took plant modes, so she's not literally unique. However, judging by the reactions of Optimus Primal and the other Maximals, they had either never heard of "Plantformers" before, or they are extremely rare.
- Yet another point of rarity: In both plant and robot mode, she has four hands (her arms divide at the elbow), and no true legs (she has roots in plant mode, and a sort of "hoverskirt" in robot mode).
