Questions tagged [flora]
For questions related to plants and vegetation in general.
453
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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
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4answers
118 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 ...
3
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3answers
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Tropical Vs. Subtropical Rainforests
In this alternate scenario, five million years ago, a mass extinction hit Earth. Not a massive volcanic eruption or a devastating bolide impact, but a sudden cold snap, a transition from Miocene ...
9
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4answers
573 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 ...
14
votes
6answers
1k views
Do different star types produce plants with different properties?
From this chart it appears that the star types closest to our own are K-type (oranger, a little cooler, and less than half as bright) and F-type (bluer, a little warmer, and much brighter). If I want ...
-1
votes
1answer
68 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 ...
6
votes
6answers
364 views
Plant/mineral that could preserve fresh meat without anything other than fire?
My character kills a goat in the mountains and eats some of it for dinner. What kind of plant or mineral could he use to preserve the meat to carry with him so that it stays fresh and doesn't become ...
9
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6answers
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Could a plant grow on a building taller than mount Everest?
I was wondering if it was possible to potentially grow a plant on a building taller than mount Everest. I mean on as in bottom to top with grass or some other plant. Would the grass run out of oxygen ...
13
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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 ...
2
votes
5answers
214 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 ...
4
votes
2answers
207 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 ...
5
votes
2answers
123 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://...
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6answers
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Could a plant be engineered to live in a vacuum?
Could an artificial plant species be designed and created that lives in a vacuum - for example on the surface of our moon?
The main problems I can see immediately would be the lack of an atmosphere ...
8
votes
2answers
98 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
546 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
159 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 ...
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votes
1answer
66 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 ...
20
votes
7answers
3k views
How would a plant evolve to germinate inside a person (or other animal)?
For the sake of the question, assume conditions are Earth-like in all manners other than those which would be required to spur the development of such a plant. I want the plant to gestate in the ...
7
votes
1answer
91 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
87 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
147 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
54 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. ...
2
votes
2answers
67 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 ...
13
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5answers
2k views
Could a plant lure humans in by using 'sex pheromones'?
So this question, Designing a Carnivorous Plant, talks about animals being attracted to a plant, at first by a sweet scent, and then being drugged by an unspecified toxin which renders them 'euphoric' ...
3
votes
4answers
161 views
how can my exploding fungus/plant explode?
So, this is another part in a lot of my questions for something I'm making. Our protagonists are unfortunately stuck on an alien planet. They end up going into a cave, which is a bad idea because some ...
4
votes
8answers
512 views
Growing blue trees [duplicate]
What about the atmosphere of earth makes green the best color for plants, and what would have to change to make blue the best color? The fact that these changes could not happen on earth, an so would ...
8
votes
4answers
142 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....
55
votes
12answers
16k views
Is a man-eating plant realistic?
Carnivorous plants live in nutrient-poor, highly lit habitats, such as bogs or rocks. For example Earth's biggest carnivorous plant, Nepenthes rajah, lives on mountain-tops with high concentration of ...
2
votes
2answers
151 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
2answers
311 views
What traits would plants have if no animals or humans existed? [closed]
On a planet very similar to earth, but absent insects and animals, what general traits would plants have?
Not looking for specific varieties, but more for general traits, like
would plants be larger ...
4
votes
3answers
153 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
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4answers
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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 ...
5
votes
3answers
359 views
Plausible reason for decreased oxygen levels with increased plant life
So, as per my Oxygen levels and explosions question, there is a planet with substantially lower oxygen (16%) and a planet with higher than average oxygen (25%) that are fairly earthlike in temperature,...
6
votes
5answers
349 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 ...
21
votes
6answers
3k views
How can a natural process create a near-perfect geometric shape as the most prominent feature of a planet?
Starship Not-Enterprise exits hyperspace and looks at the planet filling up the window. Their jaws drop. The planet has a perfect geometric shape clearly visible from space, occupying the majority of ...
3
votes
4answers
304 views
What fruits and vegetable could people grow in the year 6,000 year BC?
Considering a civilization that was here far before everything we know about, let's say around the time of Gilgamesh. Warm climate, almost no winters, near the ocean with enough rivers, and people ...
5
votes
1answer
104 views
Can a plant base have taste buds?
The question is in the title. Is there an existing plant that do have taste buds? If they can have taste buds, what taste buds they can have? Just in case they has less or more taste buds than human, ...
3
votes
4answers
155 views
Does the mass of a planet affect the size of living organisms?
I’m trying to do some world building for a game I’ve been working on, and so I’ve been designing a planet that would fit large fauna and flora. What I would like to know is if the mass of a planet has ...
0
votes
1answer
68 views
What could/would change if plants absorbed #% of sunlight? [closed]
I am wondering what could/would happen if plants absorbed respectively 50%, 75%, and 90% of sunlight during the process of photosynthesis.
That's all,
Thank you in advance.
The Square-Cube Law
106k25 gold badges214 silver badges467 bronze badges
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votes
4answers
138 views
What would be the advantage of evolving into tree-like people?
In my fantasy world, in a time when civilizations still didn't exist, there were some formless creatures with the ability to change in every way they wanted. Many of those creatures with the passing ...
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2answers
2k views
Can you naturally grow houses?
I'm Worldbuilding, and in my world, people can grow houses from seeds. My world is not a Fantasy one. Could this theoretically work, and if so, how?
(Images by Finnian MacManus)
To start the growth ...
5
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3answers
107 views
How could someone alter the composition of air sufficiently so that plant life gets more nutrients and grows faster
Im writing a story about a group of eco-terrorists who are trying to make the flora of a planet take over major cities and create a utopian wasteland. They have access to a macguffin that can alter ...
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vote
1answer
198 views
The Earth is our Moon - A Reality check for a Binary Planet System [closed]
This question is connected to another one I asked about Interstellar Transport Vehicles, but more concerned about what we could expect from a Binary Planet System.
So I want to talk about a few major ...
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2answers
272 views
Could a world be dominated by white seas?
I have this idea for a world orbiting a type O star, a particularly active kind of star producing intense radiation. As a form of adaptation, the microbial life has become bright white so to reflect ...
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8answers
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What sort of materials could be used to make clothing in a swamp?
We have some characters living in a wetland biome (freshwater swamp, specifically) without access to trade from other areas. What kinds of options do they have when it comes to using the natural ...
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3answers
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Plants made out of metals
Carbon dominates the makeup of life on Earth.
But is there any way that plants could be made out of metals, or somehow integrate metals with their constitution?
For example, we use calcium in our ...
8
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4answers
270 views
Plants Without Air
On a distant world, the atmosphere is different than ours - there is no oxygen but a high level of C02 like on Mars or the early Earth. This planet is otherwise similar to Earth but slightly warmer. ...
9
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2answers
172 views
What Would it take for Trees with Stone Core to be Self Supporting?
So I have an idea for a biome in which avian humanoids are the dominant intelligent lifeform. They live inside of trees that dwarf the redwoods of our world. The trees grow so tall and so thick (akin ...
16
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4answers
529 views
Where can you find berries that eat people from the inside out?
My low-fantasy setting features the deadly plant known as the wormberry. It produces small berries of a bright-but-overall-undecided color, all of which contain a small, edible seed. They have two ...
