Tom, didn't you see the Space: 1999 episode...
... where some members of the Moonbase Alpha crew picked a
few flowers on this alien planet and were immediately sentenced
to death by that world's sentient beings, which happened to be...
PLANTS!
So don't be so eager to brush these things off lightly, mister!
And there was that episode of Lost in Space with the alien carrot,
and the alien in the 1951 version of The Thing (from Another World)
was described as "an intellectual carrot - the mind boggles!"