Questions tagged [flora]
For questions related to plants and vegetation in general.
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Can a gorse plant be used as a source of food?
I have a fantasy kingdom set up where the landscape is mostly mountainous with rock and pine forests, like the picture below. As such, it is quite difficult to have agriculture. One plant which can ...
4
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3
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Building a Realistic Food Web
So far, I've begun developing a food web for a swampy biome. Currently, the result of this free building is shown in the mess below (built = orange, aquatic = blue, producer = green, not built yet = ...
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2
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Maximum realistic salinity level with thriving aquatic environment?
I'm trying to create a planet which environment is not immediately lethal to humans, (reasonable oxygen level) however after closer inspection turns out not to be specially Earth-like.
One issues is ...
5
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2
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How would plants evolve with longer days?
(First post on StackExchange, hello world!)
The project that I'm currently working on involves a Binary Planet system, both with life, although I'm only focusing on one. This planet has a climate ...
30
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How would trees communicate?
An alternate world is populated by mainly intelligent trees and other plants. These plants are almost exactly the same, biologically, as Earth's plants. The world's climate and geology are very ...
5
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3
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A Planet with No Animals
Assuming that an Earth analog was inhabited by both plants and animals like our Earth. Could the non-animal life on the planet survive the absence of animals (excluding sponges and corals) on the ...
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3
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The Stone-age Limbo People - How do they hunt wild boar?
The Limbo People (who are hominids with intelligence somewhere between chimpanzees and humans) have long survived by hunting wild boar. They use spears with wooden hafts and flint tips. They are a ...
0
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1
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230
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Floating Ocean Vegetation
I have several types of free-floating vegetation to pick from:
Trees
Reeds/grasses
Lily Pad like-plants
Which type would best survive in the open ocean supporting small pockets of creatures, since ...
1
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5
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316
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What Plants To Grow In Space? [duplicate]
Plants are quite useful to the intrepid space colonist, in addition to providing food, plants also help reduce life support burden and psychological stress by adding a splash of green to all those ...
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Cave/Subterranean Lighting
I have a cave that is ravine like and stretches approximately one kilometer down into the Earth. Let's assume that the cave has a clear, crystalline roof allowing some light in.
Is there any sort of ...
6
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3
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Botanical Barricades
I have a clonal colony of trees that are around 150 meters in height and live in a wetland habitat. These trees cover the majority of the wetland area, covering thousands of square miles.
What ...
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1
answer
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What poisons could have been hidden in food or drink used in the early 1700's? [closed]
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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
5
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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 ...
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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
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2
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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
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1
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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 ...
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4
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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
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1
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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)
&...
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1
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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 ...
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6
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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 ...
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Exploding fruit mechanism
I'm designing an alien tree species that produces small purple fruits at the edge of its branches.
Now, a few seconds after one of these fruits falls from the tree, it makes a small explosion, so that ...
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3
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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1
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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
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1
answer
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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
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4
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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. ...
7
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3
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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
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1
answer
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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,...
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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 ...
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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 ...
8
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4
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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 ...
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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 ...
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1
answer
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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 ...
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7
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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?
...
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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 ...
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1
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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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 ...
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3
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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 ...
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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
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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
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3
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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" ...
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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 ...
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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
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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 ...