Posts tagged flora
This question on Physics.SE asks whether other colors are possible for the sky. I would like my planet to be inhabitable by normal humans. It has 768 days and they are living in a temperate/Medite...
Due to a thick cloud layer(at approx the same heigh as Earth's) surrounding this planet, it's plants have evolved to stay above the clouds so that they can absorb sunlight from their nearby star. I...
Are there any reasonably plausible alternatives to the process used by our plants on earth (Carbon Dioxide, Chlorophyll, Oxygen) around which an ecosystem could be built in a planet with a complete...
I trying to describe colonization of an Earth Like planet orbiting a red dwarf in its habitable zone. It is NOT tidally locked with the star Similar to Earth though somewhat larger Magnetic field...
This world is all water, and I want the trees to be the only thing that represents land. The trees are horizontally positioned, and start from a large self sufficient floating seed pod, much like a...
Would it be at all viable for a person to have certain plant characteristics such as: Chloroplasts in their hair and skin, with the skin maybe lookmuch darker because of extra light absorbance (m...
If you arrive at a distant planet you mean to colonise, without enough food for the long term - just maybe a couple of plants and a bunch of seeds and enough food in storage to keep you going for t...
There are three different species of pine collectively called "bristlecones", all of whom can grow in weather too harsh and soil too poor for any other tree to take root. They are renowned for the...
Let's say that a race of aquatic merfolk have managed to achieve sapience, they are basic hunter gatherers, living in relatively shallow waters of up to 100 meters deep. As I have begun designing t...
On a world I am building, the day/night cycle last 9 years, meaning that there are interesting forms of life. Plants are the most interesting of these living things, which have many interesting for...
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 atmospher...
What many people mayn't know is that there actually three basic types of algae: Green algae, the origin of the kingdom Plantae Brown algae, found primarily in kelp forests And red algae F...
Purely hypothetical question here. Would it be feasibly possible to have a planet entirely covered in a dense network of interlocking trees? The idea is that the trees themselves act as the 'cr...
In the never ending quest to get elves to live in trees, I am taking things one step further and attempting to get the entire city in a tree. Magic is not in the equation. The tree would start out ...
Positing a high (c. 35%) Oâ‚‚-level on a roughly Earth-equivalent planet (atmosphere about like the early Carboniferous), what types of lifeforms would flourish? Obviously, giant insects could be ...
Two vastly dissimilar organisms turn out to be the same species upon gene sequencing. In this hypothetical animal species one or more components of the life cycle is a fungus, algae, plant, lichen ...
So, I've made... a lot of subterranean worlds. It's a favorite of mine. And, every single time, the major form of vegetation and light was blue, glowing mushrooms, and glowing crystals. While I thi...
Real parasitic plants target only plant hosts and in certain species fungal hosts. How plausible are parasitic plants (or algae, lichen, or other photosynthetic organisms) that targets animal hosts...
I was thinking I would have a race and at the most basic level it is a ground covering moss. As it encounters other colonies of itself they will join together to form one contiguous colony while ke...
Think stuff like plant only pokemon, Groot (Guardians of the Galaxy), veggie pygmies (D&D), etc How would people react to the fact that a vast majority of their veggies and fruits being much m...
I am trying my hand at a matriarchal society (human beings, technology similar to Earth's 13th - 16th century), and I find that for that to work they will need reasonably efficient contraceptives (...
In this alternate scenario, there is a clear ecological distinction between broad-leaved deciduous trees and coniferous trees based solely on altitude. The broad-leaves and other angiosperms are t...
I know the idea seems a bit far fetched but it's something I believe is common is science fiction and fantasy stories. I remember the talking trees of Zelda: Ocarina of time and of course, Tolkien'...
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 h...
Here's the set up: in my fantasy world, there is a species of tree similar to Banyan trees. There are several giant versions of these, and smaller ones are quite common. One of the biggest of the...
Now, bear with me because I know very little of mycology. I just know that mushrooms taste good, and that fungi is very complex with lots of different uses. For my fantasy story, I want a societ...
I have a rocky world where land-based vegetation like grass or trees are either very rare and restricted to small and rare areas or non-existent. Rather, vegetation has stayed in the oceans and dev...
Note: This question is a follow up to this question, and hence forms part of a bigger complex of questions about geology and biology in this certain scenario. Meta: The planet consists of two en...
I'm looking for various factors; Atmosphere Composition, Type of Sun, etc, whatever would work. That is, of course, if this is even likely/possible. I believe that yellow is generally not an ideal ...
One of the cities in my world is built on the ground floor beneath and around giant tree. Giant tree cities seem to pop up fairly frequently in science fiction and fantasy, but how would they actua...
Having somewhat successfully raised bamboo plants myself, I know that they're hardy plants. However, our moon is a pretty different story. If we were to bring bamboo to the moon and maintain a smal...
In this alternate Earth, there is a clear ecological distinction between trees depending on altitude. The lowlands are exclusive to broad-leaved deciduous trees while conifers can be found only on...
Basically, in the event of a blotting out of the sun á la an impact winter, what sort of food source (if any) could be used to sustain humanity? In my universe, underground/makeshift greenhouses ...
I am working on a coastal salt marsh ecosystem, and need an organism which has a large trunk. From my poking around it seems to me a large woody grass, or a Prototaxites like fungus\lichen might be...
This is based on the notion of adaptive radiation, a process in which organisms diversify rapidly from an ancestral species into a multitude of new forms, particularly when a change in the environm...
In my alternate history (1800s), I have troop hiking through tropical sub-Saharan Africa. For plot reasons, I have man-killing mosquitos, but I also have a plant that exudes CO2 and other attracta...
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 di...
An idea for a story I'm working on involves a far away world that was once inhospitable. Scientists - likely alien ones - terraformed it so it could support life (coincidentally, Earth-like life). ...
We've all heard about a river of blood. But what would happen if we had an actual river of blood? Say a band of vampires creates a magical portal that draws blood from all the people in the area ...
I am looking for a technologically-viable substance that could be used to accelerate growth in plants or very large trees. The option for administering the substance to the plant is open, whether ...
If we remove all the ferns and horsetails from the ecological equation would grass be the only candidate to fill the void? If not, then what else?
Let's assume that the earth has stopped spinning. To be clear, the earth did not end up being tidal locked with the sun, but instead, it would just stop rotating around its own axis. This should re...
A village is famous for its flowers and wants to bring in tourism by replacing its timekeeping and basing everything around a flower clock. Schools and shops all agree to set their times by the flo...
In another question, Are flying plants possible?, a point was raised that because of the square-cube law, a large, hollow, spherical plant could fly by having the air inside be a little bit hotter ...
Following up the ideas given in this question, we introduce a new gas to the mix of air. Meta: Assume an Earth-like planet. The proposed change is a pre-development change (meaning it's there sinc...
I'm planning to build a game for me and my friends where the worlds are procedurally generated. The idea is that different and habitable planets and moons have flora and fauna that has adapted to t...
I am building a fantasy world roughly the same size, elemental makeup, and atmospheric composition as Earth. In this world, there is an island (about the size of Australia) known by outsiders as th...
I am creating a Pangaea type continent for a D&D series with some friends and I was wondering (since this continent will last us years) if we should add every biome to it. IE: equatorial dry/we...
Inspired by Nick Staab's recent work "Jack" (pictured below), how would you go around cutting down massive trees? In this scenario the simpler the tools the better, as it would allow a primitiv...
I am trying to imagine a scenario in which there is a world that has been terraformed in so far as it has water and oxygen but there is only one area which has been established as a strong foothold...
