Mountain Chitinbane

The mountain chitinbane split from its ancestor, the desert chitinbane. It has adapted to the cold environments of the mountains. Like its ancestor, it produces a deadly defense - its sap, with a high concentration of "chitinase". Chitinase are digestive enzymes that break down glycosidic bonds in chitin, thus dissolving chitin. Chitin is what makes the exoskeleton of "worms" and "pedes". Thus any "worm" or "pede" that tries to bite on it with their mandibles will quickly have them melt off. Plents, ukfauna, carpozoa and iron fauna are unaffected by this sap. In fact it grows a bubble of sap at the top of their leaves that is easily popped so these other species can wipe the sap on their bodies so they can be protected from "worm" and "pede" predators.

Their sugary bubbles can be tasty for herbivores, which leads to them getting eaten quite often. This posed a problem. Their only defense, chitinase, was being neutralized by the vandriswoop injectohex. To counteract this, they now release enzymes into their sap bubbles that kills vandriswoop injectohex within them, giving them an immunity. This makes them deadly once again, but due to genetic breakdown after generations of disuse, their chitinese production has be severely depleted. Only if the bubbles are directly ingested will it be effective. North Barlowe Boreal had no vandriswoop injectohex present so it was able to spread there with none to fight off.

Its large root bulb which can store up energy and water when times are hard. This is very useful in an cold environment when they need to hibernate. As long as there are some cells left it can regrow into a full plant again.