This section is going to cover the canon facts we have about Dr. Reginald Bushroot from his actions and the exposition in episodes he appeared in. My own personal fanon backstory for Dr. Reginald Bushroot that I use in my fanfic works can be found here.
Dr. Reginald Bushroot was originally a regular duck and a researcher at St. Canard University, Lab #356, who mutated himself into a plant-duck when he ran his research experiment on himself out of desperation. His research involved an innovative solution to world hunger; he wanted to create a way for animal life to have the ability to gain nutrition through sunlight like plants do. However, his co-workers Dr. Gary and Dr. Larson, who did not like him and spent their time mocking and making fun of him, tampered with his experiment so that it exploded in front of their boss, Dean Tightbill. The dean then fired Dr. Bushroot and pulled the funding on his project. Angry and eager to prove himself and the validity of his research, he used himself as a test subject. Although he woke up the following morning still looking and feeling normal, when he stepped outside into direct sunlight, he mutated into a plant-duck. Along with the drastic changes to his appearance, he also gained the ability to communicate with plants on a telepathic level, the ability to transform his own body through re-growth and regeneration, and the ability to control plants to an extent. He can make them grow faster or larger, and make them ambulatory. The control is not absolute, however, and seems to be more of a cooperative relationship.
Before his mutation, Bushroot worked somewhat regularly with at least three other scientists. Two were Dr. Gary and Dr. Larson, who it's implied that he murdered with his newly acquired plant powers out of revenge in Beauty and the Beet. Although he had plenty of reasons to hate them enough, it was most likely their mockery of him right after his mutation, combined with their ruining of his career, that pushed him over the edge to that vengeful act. There is some debate about their fate, as no actual bodies were shown, just two big fat shrubs with glasses, and it's never actually stated that he killed them. My own personal interpretation, however, is that he did indeed murder them. I use the fact that Darkwing and Launchpad treat the "bodies" more like crime scene evidence than an emergency rescue (if they were alive under there, wouldn't rescue workers have rushed to cut them free?) and the lack of eyes drawn behind the glasses, which implies lifelessness, as evidence. Also, Dr. Gary and Dr. Larson as those those characters are never seen again. Two scientists that look remarkably like them do briefly appear in Going Nowhere Fast, but their names are never given, and it's entirely possible that the animators just recycled the scientists' design for that scene.
The third co-worker, Dr. Rhoda Dendron, was a fellow scientist that worked with Bushroot, although not on the same projects as him. Neither did Dr. Gary and Dr. Larson, for that matter, although those two seemed to be lab partners and working in tandem, while Bushroot and Rhoda each seemed to work independently. It's made clear that Reggie Bushroot was in love with Rhoda, but it's unclear as to whether she returned those feelings at all on a romantic level. Rhoda did like him at least on a friendly basis, though. She was kind and encouraging to him as he talked about his research, and tried to reassure him after Dean Tightbill fired him. She also stood up for him to Dr. Gary and Dr. Larson, and tried to plead his case to Dean Tightbill. Although Rhoda was visibly shocked when she first saw Bushroot in his mutated plant form, and that along with Dr. Gary and Dr. Larson's taunts caused him to run out of the lab, Rhoda later defended Bushroot to Darkwing and Launchpad despite what he had done to her co-workers.
Bushroot interpreted Rhoda's defense of him as proof that his love was returned, and later abducted her. Interestingly, Rhoda didn't get too upset when he first showed up wearing a tux in his new plant-mutant form and grabbed her, but she did freak out when he called in a giant pet fly trap named Spike to attack Darkwing and Launchpad while he left with her in his arms. When he took her back to his greenhouse with it in his mind to marry her, she was shocked to say the least. When she told him no, that she couldn't marry him because her career was too important to her (and besides, he's a plant and she's a duck, so it'll never work!) Bushroot declared his intention to turn Rhoda into a plant-duck like him to take care of "that little problem" in their budding relationship. Luckily for Rhoda, Darkwing showed up and nipped Bushroot's mutation of Rhoda and his wedding plans in the bud, saving her and mulching him. Rhoda was never seen in canon again after that, and Bushroot never mentioned her again, either.
Shortly after the fiasco with Rhoda, Bushroot tried to grow a plant-bride of his own using an interesting array of items that included some posy blossom for "that feminine touch". Unfortunately, Spike, who remained Bushroot's loyal pet throughout the series, broke the jar of posy blossoms and tried to switch it with potato starch, creating Bushroot's infamous vampire potato bride. During that ill-fated and short relationship, we learned that Bushroot is not only lonely, but that he also has a nasty jealous streak as well as a vengeful one (which was made clear previously in his intro episode). When he thought that Darkwing was making out with Posy (in reality, she was choking him), he first fell apart at being betrayed and then went livid with rage, and tried to mow down Darkwing with a farm tractor for fooling around with his bride.
Bushroot's loneliness is a continuing theme throughout his solo appearances as a villain, although the incident with Posy was the last time we saw him try for romantic companionship. In Twin Beaks, he did say, "Come on, baby, there's a whole planet out there to show you!" to the mutant cabbage that he stole at the end, which could be interpreted as a come-on, but it also could have just been him talking in excitement, so that's open to interpretation. The cabbage is never seen again, regardless, so I suppose the alien cow's warning that if even one escaped, it would be disastrous, was a false alarm.
In The Incredible Bulk, Bushroot created powerful daisies with some experimental fertilizer that he stole originally intending to help Spike grow to a bigger size after he accidentally shrunk him. (Spike didn't want any due to the warning label saying there was a chance it'd either make the plant grow or kill it instantly.) Bushroot became quite fond of the daisies he created to prove to Spike that he'd be fine, but he seemed to regard them more like some combination of children and henchmen. In that episode, he treated Spike pretty poorly, and all but ignored him once the daisies were around and become his favorites. However, at the end Bushroot said that he was glad that he at least had Spike to depend on. (I wonder if he knew that Spike let Darkwing and Launchpad go from the Teapot of Doom out of spite when Bushroot ran out after his daisies?) Unfortunately, like most of Bushroot's creations other than Spike, the daisies were put out of commission by the end of the episode, and weren't seen again.
By the time Slime Okay, You're Okay occurred, Bushroot was desperate for any kind of meaningful relationship or friendship. He invented a formula called IQ2U that could turn ordinary plants into intelligent, sentient plants like him (temporarily, anyway, as it ultimately proved unstable). He tried to befriend Yucky Duck, who was actually Gosalyn transformed into a slime monster by his formula and temporarily estranged from Darkwing. Later on, Darkwing realized that he would need Bushroot's help to save Gosalyn and clean up the mess that had been created. He told Bushroot that they'd need to work together, and Bushroot looked at him hopefully and said, "Like friends?" implying that he would even be willing to befriend a bitter enemy, someone he had previously tried to murder on multiple occasions, if it meant an end to his loneliness. Naturally, that did not work out, although Darkwing did let him run off and "escape" for doing the right thing and helping him in the end.
One can speculate that Bushroot's loneliness is part of what compelled him to join the Fearsome Five, although canon doesn't give his reason for doing so. He seems to enjoy being a part of that team, although like the other members of the Fearsome Five who aren't Negaduck, his abilities seem lessened and his cowardice highlighted in those capers. In his last appearance going by air date (Jail Bird) he's willing to turn on Darkwing along with Liquidator, Megavolt, and Quackerjack even though Darkwing helped him and the others get their powers back after Negaduck betrayed the other Fearsome Five members and stole them. Again, Bushroot's reasons for doing so aren't specifically stated, but it compels me to think that by that point, Bushroot feels more like he "belongs" with the Fearsome Five, and therefore follows the whims of the group as a whole so that he fits in. At any rate, it would be interesting to see if he would have made the same decision to turn on Darkwing if the other three hadn't been involved and it had been just him.
Other factoids about Bushroot:
He's a genius. Of course, that's pretty much a requirement for being a mad scientist, which Bushroot could rightly be called. He has a doctorate, presumably in botany, although it's never specified exactly what degree(s) he holds or where he obtained them. He worked at St. Canard University, but he could have acquired his education anywhere.
He's cowardly. This is evidenced in most of his appearances. In fact, in his very first run-in with Darkwing Duck, he declares "You play too rough!" and runs off to get some plants to do his brute work for him. That's how Bushroot pulls off pretty much all of his crimes, by having plants do his dirty work. Even before he was a bitter criminal mutant plant-duck, Reggie had trouble standing up for himself to bullies like Dr. Gary and Dr. Larson. It wasn't until he had super-powers that gave him a clear advantage that he tried fighting back.
He's insecure. Bushroot's desperate need for companionship and the hints of low self-esteem that we saw in his life prior to villainy all show a deep desire for love and acceptance by others. Being a mutant-plant duck that most of society fears only makes it that much worse. Also, like most insecure individuals, Bushroot reflects the company he keeps to an extent. Because of that, and his occasional willingness to work with Darkwing like in Twin Beaks and Slime Okay, You're Okay (and also trying to befriend him in the latter), it's common among his fans to believe that he can easily be redeemed. Perhaps he could, but I'm not so sure it'd be so easy given how shaky his moral compass is. A true redemption for Bushroot could only happen if he developed enough real self-worth to believe that he genuinely was a good individual, and act accordingly. I don't doubt that he would act less villainous, or be motivated to try and become a more positive individual if he was to find a healthy friendship or romantic relationship with someone good like Darkwing or Rhoda Dendron, though. Conversely, as long as Bushroot's hanging out with the Fearsome Five, perhaps because he believes that they're the only ones that do or will accept him as he is, he's only going to get worse, not better.
Scientifically, Bushroot is classified as a Lyceum nycanthropus. This is a fictional plant, although Googling "Lycium" brings up a Wikipedia article about Lycium barbarum, the wolfberry, which has a purple flower. And "nycanthropus" is only one letter off from "lycanthropus" which is quite close to "lycanthrope", the term for werewolf. Interesting play on the wolfberry, huh? Reading further on in the article, we learn that this plant is in the Solanaceae family, which also contains potatoes, petunias, and deadly nightshade. Maybe Posy the potato wasn't so far off from what he was compatible with after all! (Then again, his pollen did contribute to destroying her, so that might've been a short and disastrous wedding night had the marriage been consummated, er, pollinated.) Also, it was a petunia that Bushroot wanted to transform Rhoda with (which actually did not look at all like a petunia in how it was drawn) so it seems that he was thinking about compatibility there. All joking aside, I also think that a thistle looks quite a bit like Bushroot. So much, in fact, that when they grow in the summer, I've come to call them "little Bushroots".
In Night of the Living Spud, we learn that Bushroot is not affected by gas from Darkwing's gas gun. This implies that if he does have lungs, their primary function is to allow him to draw air to speak, or that they're a secondary way for him to acquire his airborne nutrients, and that he primarily gets them through plant-style respiration. In that same episode, we also discover that he has pollen like other plants, and that it comes from his head. This begs the question, if Bushroot's pollen is viable, and it can fertilize female flowers of the plant kingdom, are the offspring technically his children, and would they have any duck characteristics from his mutated part-duck DNA? And since he's half-duck and half-plant, could he also "pollinate" a female duck if he wanted to? (The lemon writers out there can get into the specifics of how if they want to go there, hah!) Also, knowing what a plant's pollen is the equivalent to in the males of the animal kingdom, and that Bushroot deliberately shook it all over Darkwing and Launchpad, that scene amuses me immensely on a childish level. Oh Reggie, you had no shame at all there, did you?
He "died" a couple of times in Twin Beaks. Sort of. Empty husks that look like dried-up Bushroot turn up in that episode, which shows how extensive his own body's transformative powers are. Leaving his husk behind, he turned himself into a vine and grew out through a jail cell window, and he also turned himself into a whispering log for a good portion of that episode as well. You also see him appear as a ghost similar to Jacob Marley from "A Christmas Carol" in a dream sequence that Darkwing has in this episode. In Easy Come, Easy Grows you see Bushroot do some incredible arm-stretching, and in Slime Okay, You're Okay he does the same thing with his torso. I guess that explains how he gets out of the knots that Negaduck has been known to tie him into. Those abilities do have their drawbacks, though, and he can't retract himself as fast as he can sprout, which we see in Easy Come, Easy Grows.
Bushroot has been defeated in the following ways: he's been mowed, beaten senseless and chased off by hillbillies with flame and pitchforks (thinking he was a vampire), mulched in a wood-chipper, "put out" (read: beaten repeatedly against the floor) by Stegmutt, flash-frozen, having his giant daisy chased off by a giant bee (which makes no sense... bees and plants have a symbiotic relationship! Unless it just really didn't want to be pollinated right then, or something.), written out of a story he was the star of in an embarrassing way, having his vines run away from Darkwing's clippers, and being caught in a net. The latter is the most embarrassing considering that same net got Megavolt, Quackerjack, and Liquidator (WTF!) after they got their stolen powers back. And although it's only mentioned as an aside by Launchpad, Bushroot also had a cringe-worthy off-screen defeat where he hid from Darkwing in the back of a police car. Hypothetically, Bushroot was also done in by a giant anvil in the future in Time and Punishment. He's also endured having his arms tied up by Negaduck in what looked like a rather painful way. If you want to count him, the pirate Bushroot of the past in Darkwing Doubloon was defeated just by falling into a hole.
In Life, the Negaverse, and Everything, the Bushroot of the Negaverse (often referred to as Nega-Bushroot) is a good guy, and a part of the team called The Friendly Four along with Nega-Liquidator, Nega-Quackerjack, and Nega-Megavolt. Darkwing taught them how to fight Negaduck and his evil crew of Nega-Launchpad and the Nega-Muddlefoots (minus Tank, who is friendly and polite) and they wear Darkwing-esque costumes and call themselves "Darkwing's Ducks".
According to Rockwell and Crosby in A Star is Scorned, Bushroot's cuddliness index is off the charts. Well, that would explain all of his fangirls, wouldn't it?
Got anything to add? Drop me a line at either bushroot@cheezey.org or cheeezey@yahoo.com.
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