Questions tagged [flora]
For questions related to plants and vegetation in general.
0
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1answer
58 views
What poisons could have been hidden in food or drink used in the early 1700's? [on hold]
I'm writing a character who has to kill her children by poisoning. I just need something they wouldn't have tasted. It doesn't matter if it kills them fast or slow (either will work). Back then ...
4
votes
2answers
105 views
Do these plants make sense in the way I want them to establish in my world?
(Beforehand I'll excuse myself for my english. If you didn't need to know that you can just ignore it)
There's a network of root-like life forms in the top layers of my planet. They use some kind of ...
12
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2answers
610 views
Anatomically Correct: Space Plankton
This creature was void-born in the farthest depths of time in this Universe. Drawing its energy from electromagnetic radiation, and sealed against the vacuum of space, this drifting creature ...
4
votes
4answers
206 views
Purple plants on a planet orbiting a green star?
Before I continue, yes, green stars don't really exist visually. Although stars like the Sun are green stars, they appear white (and are known as yellow dwarfs) because it doesn't only emit green ...
7
votes
1answer
201 views
Can fiber optic cables be used to pipe sunlight into an underground bunker for growing plants?
One major problem with living underground is you lose all of that wonderful energy provided by the sun. This energy is useful for many things including growing plants for food. A window is effectively ...
4
votes
2answers
138 views
Compass on a Ringed, Earth-like Planet
Is it necessarily a given that a compass (as they magnetically function on Earth) could be made to function similarly on an alternate, Earth-like, ringed planet?
Another way of asking: is it feasible ...
2
votes
1answer
54 views
Anaerobic Fungal or Plant life
The Dark Warlock Susie has heard of a cave system with a lethal density of argon that is protecting a burgeoning monster population. In the interest of beefing up her security, Susie wants to recreate ...
3
votes
3answers
528 views
Could a new species wipe out the rest of an established ecosystem?
I'm not asking about an exotic species in the modern world we know all too well the havoc that can be caused by the introduction of an alien species into an existing ecosystem. I want to know if a ...
1
vote
1answer
54 views
Food crops for a planet with short year
Kjør bestillingen 92 umiddelbart. Frøhvelvet skal åpnes, skyttelbussen skal tilberedes.
(Execute Order 92 immediately; the seed vault is to be opened, the shuttle prepared)
&...
4
votes
1answer
100 views
Mega-Dandelion Seed Size
How large, referring to weight, could a Dandelion seed become before the wind was no longer able to carry them away? Assume the physiology of both the seed and plant remain the same besides being ...
6
votes
6answers
340 views
Producing oxygen without plants
Obviously, current oxygen levels should last us years, so we are talking about a long-term solution.
Also, in this hypothetical scenario, plants have stopped releasing oxygen but haven't stop ...
9
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5answers
2k views
Exploding fruit mechanism
I'm designing an alien tree species that produces small purple fruits at the edge of its braches. Now a few seconds after one of these fruits falls from the tree it makes a small explosion so that its ...
0
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3answers
89 views
Human Survival on Alien Flora/Fauna [duplicate]
Allow me to pose yet another hypothetical.
Your spaceship has crash-landed on an earth-like planet. The air is breathable. The gravity is a bearable 1.2 g. The planet is teeming with fauna and ...
11
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6answers
2k views
Materials in a tidal water world
I'm trying to create a people that live on this rolling tide (see previous question or on 'millers planet') but I haven't figured out where they would get wood to build their boats/homes. If the tide ...
5
votes
1answer
260 views
What if animals evolved from fungi?
So in my book series, there is this planet called Axaca. However, it is very different from most of the galaxy in that its flora is almost completely fungal. Here are some things to know:
Trees are ...
7
votes
1answer
119 views
Anatomically Correct Tiberium - Part 1 (Mineral Leaching)
In the Command & Conquer series of games, there is a mythical 'plant' life called Tiberium. It ends up being of alien origin through the course of the games, but its role in the game is as a ...
4
votes
1answer
120 views
How tall could bamboo grow
How tall could a bamboo-like (i.e hollow with nodes) tree be ? It should be at very least 1.5m of diameter and walls no more than 20cm thick. The internodes should be 2 to 5 meter long. I think it ...
8
votes
4answers
361 views
How would flora be affected by longer night than day cycle?
Night/Day Cycle
I'm trying to make a fantasy world with a longer night cycle than day.
With the advice of Renan, 12 hours of proper night, 4 hours of near/partial dark and 8 hours of good light. ...
6
votes
3answers
225 views
What would it take for a plant to produce electric shocks?
I'm designing an alien plant soecies that has evolved to produce electric shocks, as a way to keep insects away from it. My question is, how would it produce electricity in the first place? Also, ...
2
votes
1answer
100 views
What would happen if all (higher) life magically became sentient and reached human-level intelligence? [closed]
Overnight, all higher life, multicellular life forms from trees and grass to dogs and elephants reached a level of intelligence similar to that of humans. For example, they can communicate effectively,...
7
votes
6answers
232 views
Plausibility Check: Kite Trees?
Disclaimer: This question, unlike my other tree related question, was brought about by pure whimsical daydreaming. I also threw the term "evolve" around a lot, I should clarify that what I asking is ...
9
votes
2answers
155 views
Plausibility Check: Territorial Trees?
Background
In case you haven't heard: there are places in the Amazonian Jungle called Devil's Gardens. The gardens are large swaths of land composed of almost entirely one single tree the Duroia ...
7
votes
4answers
138 views
Are Extraterrestrial's pagoda trees plausible?
In the National Geographic mini-series Extraterrestrial or Alien Worlds, they featured a hypothetical gas giant moon called the Blue Moon. The Blue Moon orbits a binary star, has a very dense ...
13
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5answers
1k views
Are plastic plants plausible?
Edit: some answerers seem to be slightly misunderstanding the nature of the premise. Remember that the concept here is this; In the Precambrian of Earth, bacteria evolve to extract the abundant ...
3
votes
1answer
117 views
Plant-Animal reproduction
I'm designing an Anthropomorphic Lu-pine. (Get it? Cuz it's technically a tree, but it looks like a werewolf.) They are mobile, omnivorous plants, slightly larger than the average person. They are ...
11
votes
7answers
357 views
Could a plant vocalise and how?
If given a reason to develop such a process, such as attracting prey or scaring away threats or even making recognisable patterns to 'talk' to humans, what is the most likely way they would do this?
...
1
vote
0answers
88 views
A huge desert full of green sand, seated on a plateau, is steadily drained into the nearby lowlands. What happens to the environment? [closed]
I have a large plateau, and roughly in the center are mile-high cliffs surrounding a valley.
Inside the valley is a green sandy desert. The sand is composed of olivine. Unfortunately for the ...
2
votes
1answer
151 views
Viability of animal plant? (Energy calculation)
I'm trying to design a humanoid or anthropomorphic organism that would be classified as a plant. The main argument people mention is that it wouldn't be able to produce enough energy to survive. I've ...
5
votes
3answers
102 views
How relevant is new genetic diversity for plant/animal populations badly bottlenecked several centuries ago?
Scenario: A major ecological disaster occurred five hundred years ago, in which large numbers of species (including almost all wild fauna) went extinct. Assume that the environment both before and ...
6
votes
4answers
192 views
How long could an alien species survive at sea?
The species in question are Herbivores, bipedal in nature, around 50 to 80 pounds on average, and require around 2250 calories per day to stay healthy.
The ships these populations would live on are ...
26
votes
11answers
5k views
Which plant species would be most likely to recover after a decade of no light?
Presume a decade of darkness, after a several months of steadily shortening daylight. Assume that the temperature and weather patterns remain (inexplicably) fairly unchanged.
Ten years later, when ...
0
votes
2answers
62 views
Complete Biosphere DNA Collection [closed]
So you have just come across a new life bearing planet with organisms with Earth-like biology. You want to accomplish a complete biosphere analysis (sample collection) in a timely manner. How would ...
1
vote
3answers
202 views
A Temperate Deciduous Monster--Too Big?
What is a flower or shrub back home is a tree in an alternate Earth, and vice versa. That is something worth exploring.
For example, Taraxacum officinale can grow from stems typically up to 5-40 ...
8
votes
3answers
257 views
Largest Flower Size Possible
On an Earth analog, assuming all the selective pressures necessary are there, how large can a flower's bloom evolve to be? I'm referring the the vegetative part of the flower, the petals! I have no ...
2
votes
0answers
71 views
Feasibility of Continent Spanning Trees [duplicate]
I have a world smaller than Earth (radius= 3,900 Km) with the same gravity and it is largely covered in interconnected continents. I also have a species of tree that can create a clonal forest of ...
0
votes
3answers
199 views
Feasibility of a mainly forested planet
I have a small planet with a Radius of 3,900 kilometers and a density of 8.9 g/cc. It has an extremely Earth-like climate and has been extremely volcanically and geologically active in the "recent" ...
4
votes
7answers
2k views
Could natural selection imitate humans' selective breeding?
I have a small isolated archipelago. Is it feasible that the flora of the island through natural selection (with animals favoring bigger fruits) has been steered to evolve large, plump fruits of the ...
3
votes
2answers
84 views
What Other Types of Broadleaves Would Grow in Subarctic Conditions?
As it turns out, conifers are not the only trees to grow in boreal forests, or taiga. At the southernmost ends, the evergreens are mixed with such deciduous trees as:
Birch
Alder
Willow
Poplar
Maple
...
9
votes
3answers
217 views
Feasibility of Giant Fungi
I have a temperate rainforest environment within the arctic circle of my planet. What is the feasibility of fungi storing nutrients from dead matter during the daylight hours, then erupting to create ...
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13answers
4k views
Can a planet harbor plants of different colors without one pigment outcompeting the others?
On Earth, all plants are green because they contain the pigment chlorophyll, which photosynthesizes by absorbing all light except green light.
However, it is quite possible - if not likely - that ...
14
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6answers
2k views
Sugar-bomb tree mechanics
I'm developing a tree that has a peculiar fruit. Instead of having water in said fruit, there is nothing but sugar. The tree pumps sugar into a hollow orb which slowly "bakes," caramelizing into an ...
8
votes
4answers
211 views
Herb and plant creation with real life botany information
I've been on the worldbuilding StackExchange for a little while now and I have yet to see a specific line of questioning. How do I design and create flora for my world? As this particular question may ...
24
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14answers
10k views
How to kill trees?
In a world where magic energy and life-force are compatible if not equivalent forces, woodcutting can be a problem in regions with high magic potential.
If a woodcutter fells a tree and leaves it, it ...
1
vote
0answers
73 views
Life on oceans above the sky [closed]
The Leidenfrost effect is a physical phenomenon in which a liquid, in near contact with a mass significantly hotter than the liquid's boiling point, produces an insulating vapor layer keeping that ...
27
votes
6answers
8k views
Could a virus that just kills plants be the end of us all?
Skip to Info if you can't be bothered reading
(Story Plot)
There are two super powers in a "cold war" scenario. One side decided that nuclear war wasn't the only thing they could use to hurt their ...
5
votes
4answers
187 views
What happens to plants when the temperature increases a lot in a couple of years?
Consider an area of a fantasy world which experiences the following changes:
Amount on rainfall, and thunderstorms, increases dramatically.
Average temperature increases by 10-20 degrees Celsius over ...
6
votes
3answers
229 views
Is this a viable/realistic imaginary species?
I am creating a species for my alien world that will be seen as 'holy' by the planets dominant religion. I'd like to know if my 'holy' species could viably exist biologically/evolutionarily.
Assume ...
1
vote
1answer
186 views
How could magic theoretically alter flora/fauna? [closed]
My world is close to an alternate earth except totally different. The planets name is Ethuna, and instead of magma and a molten core, it's made of a ball of energy connecting huge masses of rock. This ...
8
votes
5answers
790 views
How to design a hyper-coffee plant
How much caffeine could you fit into a roasted coffee bean (that will later be ground and steeped) while still having a strong coffee flavor?
I'm aiming for a super-caffeine boost -- something where ...
4
votes
2answers
236 views
How would a tree that can create its own wind work and look like?
I had an idea of a wind tree that can create wind but it is not man-made) in a fantasy world. Then I began to think/wonder of ways it could realistically work without any magic.
So thats where I'm ...
