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Lady Spirit Petal
81dd60
Random ideas for Avalon, filling out ecosystems, blah blah blah:
Bardenroot – A plant made of a herbaceous material that grows many, many thick trunks in many directions. The trunks are built up of a kind of honeycomb structure, such that air blows through the plant. This is for a few reasons: the structural soundness of honeycomb means the plant will be rather strong, the hollow tubing could have a herbaceous material capable of 'absorbing' bacteria passing through to gain energy, and it would make cool ambient noises as stronger winds blow through it (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S95gjKC5f6I, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4B0hGyKV9qs). I kind of arbitrarily called it bardenroot since the sounds would be like the tree 'singing'. It wouldn't need too much light since the majority of its energy would come from bacteria, enabling it to grow in low-light locations such as particularly dense forests.
Miltweed – A rootless plant (parasitic, heterotrophic) made of a moist herbaceous material that grows in dense, low-light environments (the sun dries it out very quickly as it has nothing to stop evaporation). Takes nutrients and water from the plant it is growing on and the air. Appears a mottled purple and gray colour depending on where nutrients are in the plant - the more nutrient-rich the plant is, the deeper its colour. Reproduces sexually - instead of seeds, it has 'female' and 'male' spores that it releases. When it rains, the female and male spores grow miniscule vines 'searching' for a mate, and once finding one, grow from there. Sole female and sole male spores die very quickly.
Woodroe – An odd not-really-plant not-really-fungus. It appears to be small balls (it has no standing structure and so it can be rolled by wind and creatures) of dry, evaporation-resistant bark. However, the bark is spongiform, enabling it to send hundreds of thousands of microscopic tendrils out during moist periods to absorb water and nutrients from the air and ground. When the environment is dry again, these tendrils dry out and become a part of the covering bark, slowly increasing the size of it. It is completely dormant in dry periods, and the surrounding bark naturally prevents it from drying out completely. This enables it to be found in places ranging from desert environments (though the lack of water would mean it would barely ever get the chance to grow larger than small) to deep tropical forest environments (though the bark would become soaked and rot, killing the plantfungusthing). Reproduces asexually through spores shot from the tendrils during those wet periods.
Podorotte – a diminutive plant/bacteria symbiosis. The plant is made of a rock that is initially dense but expands in heat (like perlite or something, only not perlite because that needs too much heat) that grows really low in thick clusters. It has barely any root structure, no real 'stem' or leaves - it just forms a little pod, which in clusters makes it look like a mat or a bush of seed-shaped pods. The plant gets its energy kind of 'inserted' into it by the bacteria that grows in abundance on top of it, which gets its energy in turn by a very rudimentary photosynthesis and by cannibalising what parts of it have died. The pods contain spores of the plant. When a creature steps on or attempts to eat the plant (why on earth would it do that), the pods are crushed, releasing the spores onto its foot (or whatever), where they are easily spread around by the creature just walking. The bacteria is also super happy, because there's lots of food to be had on feet. It would basically eat out the foot of the creature, slowly rendering it unable to walk and basically killing it! Which would really suck for the animal but I think it's about time we put in some naturally shitty things. Plus, it would give any 'scavenger' type animals a better chance. I see this symbiosis growing almost entirely if not entirely in the desert – after the sporadic rains, it would grow what appear to be little rock bumps, and then the 'bumps' would expand as the water evaporates. This expansion wouldn't be able to happen in areas with more water, so the plants would be too dense for the pods to be crushed, etc.
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