There they find a species of warm-blooded mobile plants with a communal intelligence that Burlingame nicknames Oscar.

The humans learn that the Oscar beings reproduce by releasing clear bubbles full of gaseous spores.

In "Parasite Planet", the vicious, night-dwelling Triops noctivivans used these bubbles to attack Hammond and Burlingame, since the spores have a soporific effect on humans.

Despite their greater-than-human intelligence, the Oscar beings react with indifference when the local trioptes attack and consume them.

"The Lotus Eaters" appears in the following Stanley G. Weinbaum collections: Floyd C. Gale said in Galaxy Science Fiction in February 1960 that the story "gleams like new despite a quarter-century".