December 1990: First recorded case of Dinge occurs in rural Maine. The patient is already well on their way to transformation by the time that medical attention is sought. They and their family are homesteaders and are wary of doctors, preferring their own homegrown treatments. After the patient fully succumbs, they are planted deep in the forest. Scientists ask to cut off a branch to take home for study, and the family reluctantly agrees.

August 1993: The first known instance of a Planter erotica website. It soon becomes a national sensation. Religious groups, predictably, lambast it as an indication of America's descent into immoral sexual perversion. Wood jokes abound on late night TV. A month later, on Nirvana's final studio album, there is a song titled “Pennyroyal Tree.” The lyrics supposedly allude to an affair that Kurt Cobain had once had with an underage Planter groupie, and their quest to get an abortion afterward

December 1999: Boris Yeltsin resigns as president of Russia due to worsening health after a years-long battle with Dinge. During his resignation speech, a leaf grows from his forehead on live international television. Vladimir Putin takes over.