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so in my world the rivers and lakes (not sure about the sea yet) are made of blood that'll never dry up. The blood maybe fresh or not (I still haven’t decided yet,probably both anyway) i also haven’t decided if the rain will also be made of blood or not too, but if its not made of blood, then the rain will be rare, however i am still curious, if possible i want to see in both scenario.

in my world the plant originally just ordinary plant but due to the exposure of this permanent blood river phenomenon it mutate to drink this blood.

i want to know what would be need to make the plants especially tree to drink blood and grow, especially the root parts, and not filter out the blood from the real water either.

and if possible i want to know the effect like what happen to the fruit/flower it bear, or will it cant create such thing due to it? since i need the plant generally still can have flower and fruit.

the blood generally/majority is originate from human blood a bit mix with multiple type of animal blood, just in case its a crucial information regarding the blood components or made from.

fungi is out of the question i want real plant.

carnivorous plant is out of the question.

feel free to edit my grammar or the tag to be appropriate for my question.

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    $\begingroup$ Enough handwavium to have blood low in iron and rich in oxygen. Not much changes as plants already know how to do it. Plants that lived in lo-oxygen environment (swamps and rivers) get to grow really big as you introduce oxygen rich liquid. $\endgroup$ Feb 15, 2020 at 10:20
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    $\begingroup$ @SZCZERZOKŁY does the blood still contain high oxygen outside the body ? since this is not blood that circulate inside the body, i dont know would river flow give the same effect though. and so plant can just drink blood as is ? since i see them wither when getting pool of blood, also from google it give effect to plant like nitrogen deficiency and increase the salt level of the soil outside of microrganism problem. $\endgroup$
    – Li Jun
    Feb 15, 2020 at 11:36
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    $\begingroup$ Since oxygen is in the atmosphere, it would naturally be in the blood that flows in the lakes and rivers. $\endgroup$
    – levininja
    Feb 15, 2020 at 14:50

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I’m going to assume that the blood in the lakes and rivers is only red blood cells. White blood cells wouldn’t survive in the open as there would be unlimited bacteria/viruses to fight against.

Blood will naturally latch onto oxygen that’s in the air and carry the oxygen with it. That’s what blood does. Note that blood deeply submerged in a lake would not be as oxygenated as that at the surface.

Blood is rich in nutrients and can carry oxygen. Plants as we know them don’t need oxygen so much as we do but if this environment continued for a long enough period of time, some plants would probably evolve to use that oxygen and therefore grow more efficiently than plants that didn’t and outcompete those plants.

Perhaps more important than the oxygen though, blood contains minerals and vitamins. These vitamins and minerals are designed for animal bodies to use them. So your whole ecosystem is going to evolve to be animal-like. I would expect bacteria and fungi to cover lakes and the parts of rivers that aren’t flowing very fast (stagnant or close to it), as well as probably some kind of algae growing in the water.

Note that because of the high nutrient value of blood it’s going to be full of microscopic organisms in the blood and so plants and any organism that drinks in this blood will need to have a specific type of osmosis, combined with heavy white blood cell defenses, to keep the infections from coming inside the plants cardiovascular system, for your plants will need cardiovascular systems to keep the blood flowing and likewise will need a liver and kidneys to prevent itself from being poisoned by whatever will enter the blood. These are key; you would die almost instantaneously without a liver and kidneys.

Also note that having access to these nutrients will make harvesting those nutrients more effective than normal processes.

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