Bonebriar

The bonebriar is an epiphyte of large flora, such as caprystals and tropical crystamboo. The extra elevation given by this habit allows the tops of fully-grown bonebriars to show above the water, a little like lotus flowers. The "leaves" (the red photosynthetic parts) of the bonebriar store rainwater, much like bromeliads' leaf rosettes. Cloudswarmers spawn in these pools as a substitute for cryobowl pools, as the cryobowls can't live in swamp conditions. When the cloudswarmers come to spawn in the bonebriar pool, they brush against anther-like spore stalks on the inner side of the "leaves". The stalk's spores stick to the cloudswarmers' bodies, and the cloudswarmers spread the spores. They are ideal for this role because they are numerous, able to fly, and frequently visit tropical crystamboo to eat kellace berries. The water in bonebriar "leaves" originally functioned for water storage to prevent drying out in low tide, and still do so even when used as spawning pools. The waste of the cloudswarmer larvae also provides needed nutrients, since the bonebriars don't have access to soil and the nutrient levels in the swamp's mud are low anyway. It doesn't matter if a bonebriar's host dies or a chunk breaks off. To successfully reproduce, the host flora doesn't need to be alive, only sufficiently tall to allow the fully-grown bonebriar to poke above the water. Multiple bonebriars can live on the same host flora, potentially covering the diameter of the flora and growing as tall as the high tide level. Consequently, a caprystal covered in bonebriars can indicate roughly how deep the water is at high tide in the area, with each caprystal segment being approximately 0.4 m tall. Bonebriar growth is limited by calcium levels, so they are most numerous in areas with high calcium levels. For this reason, they grow fastest when growing on (calcium-based) skeletons or wadesnapper egg shells.