Beach Colonystalks

The beach colony stalk replaced its ancestor on Fermi polar beach and spread to Fermi temperate beach. Notable differences from their ancestor include a reduction of defence phytid (1) size and the fact that storage phytids (3) are now completely subterranean. The spore phytid (4) likewise has changed, now lacking a chamber and with the spore production tissue open to the wind it no longer actively puffs out spores. As part of its adaptation to the beach it is now quite tolerant of the brackish and even saline ground water found this close to the sea and has evolved a specialized form of the storage phytid to desalinate the water (2). The execs salt is stored in a hyper saline solution which is stored in special tubules in the defence phytids making them distasteful and potentially dangerous to eat. When a defence phytid is disturbed, by jostling for example, it releases a high pressure puff of concentrated toxic dust. This dust, if inhaled or ingested can cause serious and sometimes fatal poisoning. As a result species that do not have some form of adaptation to deal with this are effectively excluded from beach colony stalk colonies.