Hanging Villigrass

While the diamiarm usually digest the spores produced by Maineiac Water Table's flora, sometimes it manages to track some onto the ceiling after embarking on its upward odyssey. A population of aberrant villigrass spores ultimately produced this ceiling-dwelling variant of the villigrass.

Despite it looking similar to its ancestor, the hanging villigrass has undergone one drastic change. Unlike its ancestor which could only host microbes in its villi and digest organisms with its rhizoids, the entire surface of the hanging villigrass can perform both tasks. This adaptation was the result of a series of atavistic genes being activated, reverting the hanging villigrass to a more simplistic state while simultaneously bringing the microbe-harboring pores to the entirety of the organism's surface. This allows lithotrophic chemebas to survive in its rhizoids, where they feed on the basaltic rock, providing their ferrophile neighbors the iron required to fuel the villigrass. Meanwhile, the long villi of the hanging villigrass can now capture and digest microbes floating around in the water table, providing it with another source of carbon. The rhizoids are still capable of feeding on the table cushions that grow on the cavern ceiling. The pores on the villi themselves however have been rendered useless. The ferrophiles that once inhabited them in their distant ancestors no longer can survive in them due to the lack of iron oxides. As a result, these pores are instead occupied by an assortment of benthic consumers that colonized the open space, using it as a base upon which they can capture prey.

The hanging villigrass' reproductive strategy has changed in order to accommodate for their inverted surroundings. The spores now host a flagella that allows them to travel through the water column. They are also equipped with what amounts to a statocyst that allows them to determine their orientation. Spores will swim a short distance away from their parent before settling on another section of the cave ceiling. There, they will grow into a new hanging villigrass. Hanging villigrass often form large fields of fleshy villi that coat sections of the cave ceiling.