Black Flora
| Black Flora | |
|---|---|
 | |
  | |
| First Appearance | |
| Progenitor | |
| Community and Production Information | |
Black flora are various multicellular flora of the melanophyta kingdom. Most of them are black or have black parts though some lost their colors in hot biomes.
Anatomy
The black flora are built of three major parts: the roots, which contain water and are used to cool the plant and absorb nutrients; the stalk, and the spore chamber. Some black flora also evolved leaves, flowers, and skirts as well.
Behavior
Most black flora act just like Earth plants and grow towards the light, as the dominant source of energy for the kingdom is photosynthesis.
Their dark pigmentation and absorption of a broad spectrum of light leads to dangers of overheating and cooking, or in terrestrial species drying out, throughout the day. These dangers tends to be the main factor in some of the more notable behaviors of many lineages.
Greyscale Algae have adapted to change from black to white to prevent overheating during the day in the warm waters of their coastal home for example. Another lineage that had developed this defense are those of the Chameleon Obsidishank and kin, having formed camoplasts capable of switching from black to white within hours based on temperature. Though superficially the members of the Volleypom lineage appear to have a similar response, having leaves that change from black to white over time, it's actually due to the irreversible growth of trichomes for shade across their leaves and not cells changing color.
The basal Orange Spore Sprouts and many of their descendants take water up from the ground and exude it across their surface, cooling via evaporation similar to the act of sweating. This act doubles as a means of evapotranspiration, which has been utilized to move water upward through the bodies of larger members of the Melanoanthae phylum.
Another method for cooling include circulation of warm phloem sap to cooler areas around the body, such as what occurs in the Obsidoak and, to varying degrees, its descendants.
Colonial Bubblgea interestingly take advantage of the heat they produce to form updrafts across their collective surfaces in order to cool themselves off.
Others have more mundane means for handling the threat of desiccation, such as not living in areas where they may dry out, or going dormant during dry seasons and only growing or becoming active when the rains appear. Others still exist in environments cool enough where overheating is of little concern.
The majority of black flora are immobile, either rooted in the ground or passive drifters. However some mobile black flora have evolved ways to avoid herbivores by moving.
Breathing and Blood
Black flora gas exchange is comparable to the gas exchange that occurs in plants on Earth, with CO2 being fixed from the atmosphere to provide building blocks for sugars and other material and oxygen being released during photosynthesis from the splitting of water molecules. They do use oxygen itself for aerobic respiration in all their tissues, and as such do need access to the gas even in parts that do not perform photosynthesis. The many kinds of black flora on Sagan 4 employ various means of bringing both CO2 for fixation and oxygen for respiration into themselves, many of the smaller forms do it passively through their moist epidermis, others have forms of pores, lenticels, and even stomata. These entries into the flora may lead to spongy tissues directly or may lead to more complex tracheal systems depending on the species.
As the product of photosynthesis in black flora is sugar their sap in its pure form is typically clear or yellow to amber. However, when witnessed in the field more often than not the sap will be oozing from damages inflicted on chloroplast rich tissues, the dark pigments from said parts will change the sap coloration to something more smokey, or even brown or black depending on how severe. The color of liquid coming from a wound on a member of the black flora kingdom may also depend on other substances in their tissues, not strictly sap or chloroplast, and so could be any range of tints or hues depending on what the compounds may be within them.
Diet & Energy
All black flora are black because they absorb all visible light. This causes them to easily overheat, and so they therefore use a system of roots in order to cool themselves as well as to absorb nutrients. Some black flora are in fact not black, but grayish. Such is the bulbstalk, which lives in the desert and therefore in order not to overheat changed its color to a lighter shade of gray.
Evolution
The black flora evolved from the black algae of the melanophyta kingdom. They evolved right after the gamma ray disaster when Glicker was almost barren. They therefore adapted to life on land and filled all the empty biomes, mainly in the north. The main biome they evolved and varied in was the Yokto Forest.
Locomotion
Black flora are more or less immobile.
Reproduction
Though most black flora use asexual reproduction methods, some are more like the puffstalk - the first to reproduce sexually. The one thing all black flora has in common is that they use spores for reproduction. These spores are released from a chamber on top of the stalk that releases them and they are mostly carried through the air. The only irregular is the seedpuff, which reproduces using seeds.
Senses
Black Flora have limited senses. All can sense where the light is and grow towards it, however some have evolved mechanoreceptive senses of touch, such as the Marsh-Column Stalk that can recognize daily movements in the water and move out of the way of floating material.
Size
The tallest black flora is the Shaggy Volleypom, which can grow up to a whopping 200 m tall! The smallest black flora is Algaaquila which originally started the lineage as a microbe.
Types of Black Flora
There are 3 main types of black flora: the original microbes of various configurations; bolagae which are floating black balls in the sea and of course the orange spore black flora which are similar to Earth plants.