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Is it possible for a plant to live in the kind of environment that I created? The environment has dim light, is underground, full of lava, and has constant lava explosions. This environment also has sentient pig people and giant boars. The plant is small, red, and has bulbs at the end of it's stalks. Water is almost non-existent along with absolutely no sunlight. Is this at all possible? How?

This is a short article that I made about the plant:

Stygius Calcaneumverucca

This plant, unlike its name, is not a mushroom.

The scientific name of your plant (genus+species) Stygius Calcaneumverruca

What is the Classification of your plant? (Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species) Viridiplantae, Polypodiophyta, Polypodiopsida, Polypodiales, Pteridaceae, Stygius, Calcaneumverruca

What is the appearance of your plant? Hell Shroom is a small fungus that grows on the sand in certain parts of a fiery dimension. Fully grown, they commonly reach heights of almost 36 inches or 3 feet. The spores are rather large and are almost always at a size of 22 inches. The majority of the spore then roots into the ground showing a stem size, in its first stage of growth, of about 15 inches. In its second stage of growth, it reaches sizes of 27 inches. And its final and third stage of growth is, of course, 36 inches.

What are notable features of your plant? Hell Shroom is also a fern because ferns are already highly adaptive to heat and light and they reproduce with spores, which Hell Shroom does. The colors are a dark red color. It grows on odd sand found in very hot parts of the universe. It is an extremely fast-growing plant taking a maximum of 13.653 hours to grow one stage and takes a maximum of 40.96 hours to grow to its third and final stage of growth. This fungus can only grow on the sand and can’t grow on soil. It is not affected much by environmental factors such as light and temperature.

Lava produces carbon dioxide and Hell Shroom, being a plant, breathes in the CO2 and expels oxygen. The red color of the Hell Shroom was brought by the fact that pigs or piglins, which may eat them, cannot differentiate too much between shades of the same color. As Hell Shroom grows in fortresses, the bricks are a reddish-brown and the Hell Shrooms are a darkish red. They blend in with the surroundings from a pig person or a giant boar's point of view.

Ferns have been known to live in caves with almost no light, this dimension does not provide almost any light. No plant needs absolutely no water, so the Hell Shroom synthesizes its own. It is extremely heat resistant, the growths at the end of the stems or stalks are where it combines hydrogen and part of the oxygen that it creates. But to get the hydrogen, it has another mechanism where it injects CO2 is injected it into an aqueous electrolyte, where reacts with a cathode, turning the solution more acidic, which in turn generates electricity and creates hydrogen. The spark that it creates is used to provide the activation energy necessary to combine the hydrogen and oxygen creating water. The water is absorbed by the plant to repeat this cycle. The cathode is made of purpurin which is a real-life natural dye found in plants. However, the cathode needs carbon to function at maximum capacity. The carbon is extracted from the ground using the roots.

The roots of the Hell Shroom have few uses which are to anchor the plant firmly to the ground and extract carbon from the soil/sand. They also help insulate the plant from the heat emanating from the ground.

It does not need light because the gene for getting energy via photosynthesis is instead with a gene encoding for a glucose transporter. It is found in real-world studies that algae and ferns altered with the gene for a human glucose transporter grew in dark fermenters at densities 15 times that of sunlight-grown algae. In addition, these tiny plants which are used in a number of dietary supplements were less likely to become contaminated.

Describe the main organs of the plant. Roots, stem/stalk, and leaves/bulbs/growths.

Describe the life cycle. The first stage through the third (last) stage all function the same. It is able to reproduce in any stage though it is most effective reproducing in its last stage. The spores stick to humans, or other creatures and then get planted.

Does it have a flower or not? It does not have a flower. The growth on the end of the stem, in it’s final stage of growth, may or may not be considered a flower.

Does it reproduce with seeds or spores? It reproduces with spores. When a fully grown Hell Shroom is broken, they spread into 2-4 Hell Shroom spores. An infantile Hell Shroom when broken, only spreads into 1 Hell Shroom spore. They rely on outside sources to spread.

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  • $\begingroup$ It would be good to take the salient points from the linked document and include them in your question. Links can rot after all, and it would be nice if your question did not rot with them. $\endgroup$ Mar 14, 2021 at 21:58
  • $\begingroup$ (1) An "aqueous electrolyte" is a solution of a salt in water. I don't get how the fungo-plant creates more water than in had initially. (2) Fungi are fungi, and plants are plants, and they are not the same. If **Stygius calcaneumverucca is a polypodiophyte then it is not a fungus. Fungi are more closely related to animals than to plants. Fungi and plants are very very different. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Mar 14, 2021 at 22:49
  • $\begingroup$ BTW, **Stygius calcaneumverucca is not an allowable scientific name, because it does not respect the basic rules. First, stygius is masculine and ...verruca is feminine; the rule is that the name of the genus and the specific name must agree in grammatical gender. (And this gender is usually feminine for plants, but this is a soft rule.) Second, **calcaneumverruca is misformed as a Latin compound; try verruca-calcanei (e.g., real life Arctostaphylos uva-ursi) or calciverruca. (3) The genus name gets an upper case initial, the specific name starts with a lower-case letter. $\endgroup$
    – AlexP
    Mar 14, 2021 at 22:58
  • $\begingroup$ Where does it get its energy to perform all the chemistry you've mentioned? They seem to be reactions which require the input of energy, so where does it come from? $\endgroup$ Mar 14, 2021 at 23:19
  • $\begingroup$ This place looks a lot like The Nether, from Minecraft. Actually, you even called it "the nether" in the middle of your text. $\endgroup$
    – Mermaker
    Mar 15, 2021 at 0:31

2 Answers 2

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Going through this scientifically point by point kind of feels like kicking a kitten but here goes.

  • Lava does not make CO2. It is not burning. It is just hot rock.
  • Plants can't synthesize the water they need and they need a fair bit because they strip off the hydrogen to make carbohydrate.
  • Unless it is parasitic on a plant that gets light, a plant needs light to do photosynthesis (even cave dwelling ferns). You could have a plant that ate glucose instead of making it. That is what the parasitic plants do. They are parasitic on something that makes glucose.
  • Your plant gets hydrogen via some complicated electrical splitting of water of an electrolyte solution which is water. Splitting water requires energy. Plants use sunlight to do it.
  • Fungi are not plants. Most of this calls it a plant but it is also called a fungus.

Bio 101!

Plants get energy from the sun and use that energy to split water for the hydrogen. The oxygen is waste. They combine hydrogen with CO2 and make carbohydrate. Animals eat the carbohydrate and produce the CO2 and H2O.

An ecosystem needs an energy source. It can be light energy like the sunny top world. It can be geochemical energy like deep ocean vents. If you are digging it you can read a lot of ideas on this site about more exotic forms of energy that life might use, including heat, wind, electricity etc.


I do love creative minecraft things and I think the Nether is awesome especially with the recent update! I feel bad about poking holes in your proffered science and I do not mean to insult you with my biochemistry primer. Minecraft is not realistic (late breaking news!), The total lack of water in the Nether means beings there must be going about biochemical things differently. Water is needed for life as we know it. I conclude Nether beings are supernatural weird beings. You can have your weird nether fungus grow from the remains of dead supernatural beings.

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The carbon dioxide from the lava sounds helpful to the hell shroom, but it would need moisture to create nutrients and water probably is not exactly abundant in sand surrounded by lava. Nobody knows how Minecraft mushrooms grow, but it probably doesn't matter to most players.

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    $\begingroup$ Please see the requirements for the reality-check tag. $\endgroup$ Mar 14, 2021 at 23:23
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    $\begingroup$ Whilst an interesting aside, game mechanics don't directly answer the question. we invite you to take our tour and read-up in the help center about how we work before posting. Enjoy the site. $\endgroup$ Mar 14, 2021 at 23:32

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