Hood Plyent

The hood plyent replaces its ancestor. A hood plyent's body has three sections: Exterior tissue, interior tissue, and the interior space.

The exterior tissue is tougher and stiffer than the interior tissue. It has three functions: protection from injury, prevention of water loss, and muscle attachment. The surface or “skin” of the trunk is thick, pleated and rubbery. This makes it resistant to jumbo plyent-eating ukbacks trying to attack it. Incidentally, it doesn't stand up well to stabbing, but this is of no consequence to the hood plyent, since its predator attacks by clawing. During the winter, when the hood plyent migrates into the Darwin High Grassland, it sloughs off patches of its “skin”. It does this because it no longer needs to spend energy on especially thick “skin”, for its predator does not follow it into the Darwin High Grassland.

The interior tissue contains absorptive and muscle tissue. Villi-like structures project into its interior space. For part of the year, these villi structures are stalk-like and produce spores at their bulbous tips. For the other part of the year, they produce sticky, sugary mucus. Much like a sundew, it traps tiny fauna in this mucus and digests them with enzymes. The nutrients absorbed from the tiny fauna give it more energy for movement, increasing the likelihood of making it back to the riparian zone in time. While they can still gain a boost from stepping in rotting flora, its ability to attract and digest tiny fauna make stepping in rotting flora less necessary.

For treedundis, the hood plyent uses its own body as bait, for treedundis ate its ancestor and burrowed into arid plyents for living space. Xenobees and cloudswarmers are lured into its body by the nectar-like smell of the sugary mucus. For minikruggs, simply the prospect of shade inside the hood plyent lures them inside. As its digestive system is incomplete, corpses accumulate inside its body. This acts as bait for dartirs, though sometimes it is so stuffed with corpses dartirs cannot be trapped. The only way it can get rid of excess corpses is to have rain fall into its body and carry away the corpses in its overflow.

When it rains, it uses its interior as a storage jar. The water is transferred by the villi to the interior tissue and then the exterior tissue. This process takes a few days to complete. The “hood” of fleshy “leaves” shades its intake hole, reducing the rate of evaporation. It is able to absorb any dew that condenses on the underside of its leaves. While it can also absorb water through its feet, the water percolates so swiftly into the sand that it's not able to gain as much water that way.