Looking for a short story collection

Question

I am hoping some kind soul can please help me with the name of this collection, or at least the title of one of the stories so I can hunt it down on a used book site.

It was a paperback in the local library back in the 1970's, although the book may have been older.

One story was about a man stranded on an alien world where the plants instead of being generally green were red or orange or something. The only green on the whole planet came from his laser pistol which produced a green flash. His only companion was a local animal that rested on his shoulder like "a woman's hand", and he would tell it endless stories about green earth.

The other story that might have been in it was about some people who crash landed on a planetoid and met another stranded person who tended the plant life there, which I think turned out to be sapient.

That's all I can remember. Can anyone please help?

Answer 1

The first story is "Something Green", a short story by Fredric Brown which has been identified several times on this site.

ISFDB synopsis:

An Earthman, shipwrecked on the planet Kruger III where the range of colours includes mainly browns, reds, pinks and purples, longs desperately for the green hills of Earth and searches for a way to escape. One day, a spaceship lands and its pilot eventually finds him…

The second story is "Garden in the Void", a novelette by Poul Anderson, first published in Galaxy Science Fiction, May 1952, available at the Internet Archive.

Editorial blurb:

An airless, waterless asteroid covered with flourishing green plants? Impossible! Still there it was—tended by the oddest curator!

Both stories can be found in the 1963 anthology Exploring Other Worlds edited by Sam Moskowitz.