Echinops

Echinopsae are monsters in The Witcher, and in the game they are huge carnivorous plants. According to the bestiary they are born of curses: they sprout where terrible crimes went unatoned, or on the graves of the victims. They are meant to punish the guilty, but they are just as happy to hurt any innocent who wanders into their patch. An echinops is rooted to the ground and can’t chase you, but it shoots poisoned thorns at anything within reach.

In The Witcher

Geralt runs into them as early as Act I in the Outskirts of Vizima. In The Secret Garden, the wealthy drunkard Odo has a “gardening problem”: once he and Geralt have agreed on a price and emptied a few bottles, two echinopsae attack at midnight, and Geralt has to fight them while still drunk. Odo pays 100 orens.

In Act II the gardener posts The Echinops Contract on the notice boards outside the prison and the Hairy Bear inn in the Temple Quarter. He wants three echinops rootstocks and pays 100 orens. The plants grow in the Swamp Forest, but they are rarer than the drowners and other creatures there, so expect to search for a while.

Good to know

• An echinops only yields its rootstock if Geralt has the Bestiary entry. In Act I an old woman in the Outskirts will tell him about echinopsae in exchange for food, which unlocks the entry. The book Curses and the Cursed covers them as well.
• Besides rootstocks, they drop echinops spores.

In the books

Andrzej Sapkowski’s echinopsae are animals, not plants: monsters covered in long, razor-sharp spines that they can shoot up to ten feet. The spines shatter on impact and work their way deeper into the victim. Lying still, an echinops looks like a clump of grass.