Questions tagged [flora]
For questions related to plants and vegetation in general.
481
questions
3
votes
2answers
87 views
Why do my humongous cliff ledges have cultivable soil on them?
This world is basically a huge vertical cliff wall, hundreds of kilometers high. Some of the crevices and ledges in that wall are large enough to build cities on (up to kilometers in length and up to ...
4
votes
1answer
45 views
Lions and their natural habitat, and biomes
First time here in a few years. I remember that the last time the questions had to be specific to what I was looking for but I don't wanna swamp anyone with too much info, so I'll endeavour to be lean ...
4
votes
4answers
183 views
How can I make my underwater crops more aquatic in nature?
In my fantasy novel, I'm writing about a society of merfolk. They're well developed and have city states, but they don't have very good farming practices. As part of the story focuses on this, I am ...
3
votes
4answers
332 views
The best shape for a piezoelectric tree that harvests energy from rain?
This question is the second part of my previous question about piezoelectric plants. In summary: The plants on my world generate electricity from kinetic energy (piezoelectricity) instead of or paired ...
0
votes
1answer
69 views
Could a plant have soft cells?
Are there any issues with a plant (specifically a multicellular organism that gains energy solely through photosynthesis) having soft cells with no cell walls, similar to animal cells?
5
votes
3answers
113 views
Geometric magic in the wild
Magic comes from shapes. For example, when you inscribe a regular octagram in a circle you get a heat effect, and the right straight line atop that summons a creature from beyond the mortal plane. ...
16
votes
5answers
1k views
How plausible would apple-sized raspberries be?
In one of my settings, the people have domesticated the wild raspberry plant, and selectively bred it for larger and larger berries. Would it be plausible for these berries to reach the sizes of ...
4
votes
2answers
101 views
Flora in permanent twilight/night
Im trying to write a story which takes place on tidal locked planet in permanent twilight/night zone. Im interested in zone where "time of day" gradually changes between twilight and night. ...
2
votes
5answers
203 views
How would a "Tesla tree" work?
At some point I heard about the concept of a "Tesla tree" - a tree or plant-like thing which is able to produce tension arcs strong enough to generate and hit nearby objects with artificail ...
4
votes
3answers
116 views
Vegetation on medieval farmland abandoned for 40-80 years
What kind of vegetation may I expect to encounter on a farmland that was abandoned partially about 80 and completely some 40-50 years prior?
This is medieval-style farmland, so it is not wheat for ...
4
votes
4answers
139 views
Could a genetically modified plant become a house?
I was checking out art made by Hyrotrioskjan on Deviantart and found his Nea project. One art piece features large genetically modified plants that are able to essentially house a community. These ...
4
votes
1answer
129 views
Best shape and location of a piezoelectric plant?
Members of the electric bacteria (Shewanella) genus possess capabilities allowing the use of a variety of other electron acceptors for respiration. These include thiosulfate, sulfite, or elemental ...
7
votes
3answers
4k views
Would a moon with plantlife still give off (reflect) light?
The title basically says it all, but i will elaborate.
Earth's moon light up the night sky by reflecting sunlight.
But our moon is barren and made up of grey/white rock thus making it highly ...
4
votes
3answers
206 views
How many generations does it take to domesticate plants?
Modern crops have diverged significantly from their wild ancestors over thousands of years of selective breeding. Not all of this was deliberate, e.g. an early adaptation of wheat was for seeds that ...
4
votes
3answers
201 views
Can my plant produce hormones that cause ultra-violent behavior?
A human without hormones or pheromones could be compared to something more like a plant, tool, or simply a reactionless amalgamation of cells without purpose, fears, and emotions. Such a person wouldn'...
0
votes
2answers
239 views
What can you do with fungal spores? [closed]
The spores in question come from the vegetables described in this question. More specifically, the spores are like grains, with a chitinous shell, small wings, and a nutritious flesh, akin to softer ...
2
votes
2answers
155 views
Does this vegetable make sense?
This vegetable is a fungus grown by the people described in this question. It is egg-shaped with no stalk, and is around 1m tall and 70cm across at the widest point. They can be, and often are, ...
6
votes
4answers
1k views
How realistic is an underwater farm in a glass dome?
Say that hypothetically, I wish to grow plants under the ocean. I construct a large glass dome and house the plants in a greenhouse contained in that done. How deep underwater could I plausibly have ...
10
votes
5answers
2k views
A planet with toxic air
I just started thinking about a fictional universe where humans have colonized more or less any habitable planet (there is a huge concentration of habitable planets) and I'm trying to write down ...
6
votes
1answer
114 views
How much water could the Crown Chalice hold as it grows on high-up tree branches?
Context
In an half-time semi-arid, half-time watery forest region, lives the Crown chalice plant. It generally stands from the middle to the top of tall and wide trees, a mix between Deane's gum ...
2
votes
1answer
128 views
Could the canopy of a Dyson Tree actually work?
Piggybacking on Q: What is required to make a Dyson Tree a feasible space habitat?
So I recently came across the concept of the Dyson Tree (I’d already heard of the Dyson Sphere). For those who don’t ...
6
votes
2answers
103 views
Reef World 4 - Flora
Piggybacking on the previous “Reef World” questions.
Let’s talk Flora and how it adds to life and the environment on Reef World.
The entire planet is mostly covered in shallow ocean, but not ...
4
votes
1answer
110 views
Could terrestrial plants emerge from seaweeds?
Is it possible that plant life (or rather, alien plant analogues) could start as seaweed in water, before evolving to become terrestrial, similarly to what happened with animals and fungi? And if so, ...
4
votes
1answer
110 views
Could an organism cause the "electro culture" effect?
I came across this idea called electro culture. Basically using electricity to promote plant growth. I was wondering if a creature capable of generating and storing an electrical charge (think ...
6
votes
2answers
346 views
Sea traversing ecosystem/ship?
I'm writing a fantasy story with a race of intelligent dragons who can increase the growth rate of/manipulate plants. If we pretend this is possible, what methods could these creatures utilize to keep ...
2
votes
1answer
107 views
What color would plants be on a hot spring planet? [duplicate]
I had an idea for an alien world I want to set a story on and if this question proves popular I might ask other questions regarding this world.
The world in question is an earth like moon orbiting a ...
2
votes
3answers
161 views
Plant used-to-create genetically-engineered floating islands?
I was wondering after considering the trope of floating islands, genetically modified/genetically engineered plants that produce carbon nanotubes, which as a byproduct forming vacuum tubes as they ...
8
votes
7answers
2k views
What might cause evolution to produce bioluminescence in almost every lifeforms on a alien planet?
On a planet similar to Earth, is is possible for all living creatures to have bioluminescence? If yes, what role would it fulfill?
What other traits would be useful in such an environment?
Larger eyes?...
5
votes
4answers
327 views
What forms of life would be best adapted to living on a world with nine year long days?
Let us suppose that instead of the 24 hour cycle we currently enjoy on Earth between day and night, we instead lived on a planet with a day/night cycle that lasted a full 9 years. The noon of the day ...
2
votes
4answers
130 views
Orphan planet life plausibility
Some say life could exist on an orphan planet by using radiation like plants use sunlight. This seems plausible since some fungi do the same. But how much natural radioactive material could ...
9
votes
4answers
609 views
Fruit and liquivores
Fruit usually works in symbiotic relationship with animals by giving them food to take in and seeds to "deposit" elsewhere. But let's say you had a world where the dominant feeding method ...
-1
votes
1answer
75 views
Kinds of stars and local plant life [closed]
I know how the color of a planet's flora is affected by the light from its sun. But my problem is I keep getting things confused. Does anyone know of a resource that lays it all out in a chart? I'm ...
13
votes
5answers
2k views
Why would mushroom-like flora prefer to use a calcium carbonate skeleton instead of a chitin one?
I want to create a world for my colonists that's bleak and unwelcoming as well as alien and strange.
So to that end I wanted to make mushroom-like fungi the major flora on the planet. I've read Where ...
6
votes
2answers
154 views
What would be the longest possible tree?
Note that I ask about the longest possible tree and not the tallest possible tree.
There have been a number of questions about the tallest possible tree, and I wrote a detailed answer to one: https://...
5
votes
2answers
239 views
What would the flora of a floating continent be like?
Background
The world consists of a few layers.
Surface: You've got the normal (well as normal as can be expected in a fantasy setting) surface world consisting of a few continents and vast areas of ...
2
votes
5answers
246 views
Pre-Spaceflight alien agriculture part I: herbivores and grazers
One of the most important developments in our history as a sentient species was the development of agriculture. When our ancestors decided to grow their food instead of gathering it, it allowed us to ...
8
votes
2answers
109 views
What environment could lead to adipose-rich plants, and what would they look like?
I need a plant that acts as a very relatively effective, portable source of stored chemical energy. I figure the best way to do this is to have a plant/plant-like organism that stores its unused ...
11
votes
2answers
2k views
What would make a plant's leaves razor-sharp?
Imagine a field of plants that when walked through cuts human skin. Unlike a Stinging Nettle, the leaves would have to have razor-like edges, without the trichome hairs. The leaf edges should cause a ...
3
votes
2answers
560 views
Would Venusian Sunlight Be Too Much for Earth Plants?
This is Chris Wayans's map of a terraformed Venus:
While there have been questions in this Stack Exchange on how to make Venus more livable for us humans, one question stands glaringly absent, and ...
-2
votes
1answer
163 views
Which animals would Ents (tree men) want to cull? [closed]
Imagine you were an ent, a tree person, and the day is going just fine, until.... TERMITES!!
You panic, stumbling through the glen as you try to scratch the annoying, horrifying and perhaps even ...
-2
votes
1answer
91 views
Which Crops/Other Plants Could be Grown in a "Tropical Mediterranean" Climate?
In my book series, the region around the capital city of one of my planets has a very odd climate: while it has the year-round warm-to-hot weather of a tropical climate, it also has an exaggerated ...
7
votes
1answer
119 views
What properties of grass would a plant need to fill the niche of grasses?
What features of grasses would need to exist in a plant for the plant to fill the same niche as grasses in a grassland?
4
votes
1answer
100 views
What would plants that derive food from magic look like?
My magic is a gas, and this gas floats up high. Plants get their food from this gas, not from the sun. There is some magic everywhere, however the higher you go, the more magic. What would these ...
5
votes
4answers
181 views
What purpose could algae have to glow in the dark?
What purpose could algae have to glow in the dark?
I means, they have no eyes and they cant profit from it?
from a predatory stand point it might as well signal grazer to come feast? Which is not very ...
2
votes
2answers
85 views
Plantlife seasons on the moon of a rogue planet
My moon is about twice the size of Earth, and orbits its planet from far away. It has no sun as it orbits a rogue planet, however its planet stretches it due to tidal heating, and thus it has heat. ...
3
votes
2answers
87 views
Could mermaids grow algae with bioluminescence?
Bioluminescence can cause photosynthesis, it has been confirmed. But is it feasible to grow algae, or some other plant, by the light of bioluminescence alone?
Is it technically feasible with existing ...
10
votes
4answers
216 views
Is it possible to make blazing, flying spores/seeds?
You may have heard of pyrophites : They are plants which have a strong relationship to fire, whether they are extremely resilient to it, blossoming with it or simply as a way for their seeds to sprout....
2
votes
2answers
186 views
Could ants thrive on mars if they stayed underground? [closed]
Lets say humans would want to populate Mars with ants. Would it be possible for an ant colony to create a self sustaining ecosystem underground on Mars, by for example farming fungi, like some ants do?...
4
votes
3answers
213 views
How to make a light purple atmosphere, and which color would plants be? [duplicate]
So in this world I was writing about I need one exclusive zone of the planet to be purple and their plants to be adapted to this atmosphere.
What would I need?
12
votes
4answers
1k views
Can horn be used as a substitute for greenhouse glass?
Setting is in an era when glass would be expensive, in a cold, mountainous region with a lot of goats and horned monsters. I know horn was used in lanterns, but I'm not sure if it would allow through ...
