Bibloom Stalk

Bibloom stalks are parasites that collect water, minerals and nutrients from a nearby colony stalk tuber. While they can still make sugars for themselves, they must tap into a host to acquire enough water and minerals. This is due to their very shallow roots. The shallowness of the roots developed from a lack of necessity for deep roots, as they acquired all their water and minerals from host tubers.

While they have no defenses of their own, they are protected by their proximity to colony stalks. With no energy devoted to defenses, and less to root growth, it can spend more of its energy on reproduction. Despite its smaller size, it produces a slightly greater volume of spores compared to the spore phytids of its host, and twice as much as a sunstalk-descendant of an equivalent size. (as well as twice as much as a bibloom stalk with one of the "blooms" experimentally removed)

While thumbwalkers remove potentially harmful grazers and parasites off colony stalks, they don't recognize bibloom stalks as a parasite. This is for multiple reasons: one, they look much like colony stalks; two, they don't grow on a stalk, just next to one, and three, adult thumbwalkers have no idea that all their food items happen to be parasites or grazers that might harm colony stalks. That their selective diet benefits colony stalks is entirely inadvertent.

Incidentally, Bibloom stalks taste much like raw spinach. This is remarkable because spinach, though disliked by many, was cultivated by humans to be tastier than its wild form. Consequently, bibloom stalks are unusually tasty by sunstalk-descendant standards.