Maulwart

Maulworts, which split from their ancestor, are a slow-growing species that live on the back dunes of Fermi Temperate Beach and into the outer edges of Fermi Desert. They are very tough, prickly, and bad-tasting due to multiple defensive chemicals, and slightly poisonous if eaten in excess.

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General Physiology
Maulwarts have very thick stems, studded with small, sharp, prickly leaves. These leaves are somewhat similar to thorns on grapefruit trees, although harder and sharper. As in its ancestor, the leaves are high in oxalic acid, making them unpleasantly sour or even toxic to would-be herbivores, deterring even those herbivores that specialize in sharp leaves, like curazzopes. A mature Maulwart has a woody stem, but younger individuals are merely crunchy and carrot-like. Most of their tissues taste like ashes and salt, but the younger, tenderer specimens are especially bad-tasting, compensating for their otherwise appealing tissue.

The stem is covered in thick, deeply fissured bark. In wetter seasons, they shed flat chunks of bark intermittently, leaving puzzle-piece-like patterns on the stem. New chunks of thick bark quickly regrow, but for a few days, it is vulnerable to sapworms and other fauna that can pierce somewhat surface tissues. As fog or dew covers the flora, moisture accumulates in its fissures, condensing into trickles of water it can then absorb.

The terrible taste comes from a combination of chlorogenic acid (the same compound that makes coffee bitter), oxalic acid, tannins, and a few other chemicals. The lectins in various tissues, including its nectar, can cause stomach upset in some fauna if eaten to excess, but the biggest part of its toxicity comes from wisterin, a toxic glycoside. Wisterin exists in its tissues at much lower concentrations than lectin, and is concentrated in the flower.

Reproduction, Flowering, and Pollination
Remarkably among its kin of the time, it reproduces sexually. However, unlike many flora, it reproduces in an isogamous way, with just one mating type, rather than "male" or "female". Reproducing sexually and using pollinators capable of flight has allowed advantageous gene variants to spread rapidly through populations, even away from high Maulwart concentrations, and more importantly, for sets of variants adapted to multiple stressors. Maulwarts withstand not only low moisture levels, but also fairly high salt levels in the soil or water, and even hot days (though it’s a rare concern in its habitats’ latitude).

Rather than having specialized male and female cells of drastically different shapes and behaviors, it has a plus strain and a minus strain. Each individual Maulwart produces only one strain, making it impossible for its gametes to fuse with each other. The gametes produced meet, fuse, and undergo nuclear fusion, forming spores which are distributed on the wind, much like flowers drying up and making wind-borne seeds.

Due to the sheer volume of gametes it makes, though, occasionally a few gametes end up as the other strain of the rest. Each gamete has identifying proteins on its surface. During the initial meeting of the cells, if the cells do

In harsh conditions, which are fairly common in its dry habitat, it may produce only a single flower. In better conditions, it can produce 3 or 4 flowers. Though the flower is fleshy and somewhat high in moisture, would-be herbivores are usually deterred by its bitter, ashy, salty taste. Out of all its parts, it is the most loaded with feeding deterrents. In excess, the chemicals of the flower interfere with digestion and cause stomach upset.

Its moist, fleshy, weakly scented black flowers, flourlike, sticky yellow-orange spores, and bitter, coffee-flavored nectar fairly high in minerals gives it an unusual set of pollinators. Its ancestor’s biggest pest, a tiny, short-lived sapworm species that sucked the sap from its spore chambers, co-evolved with it, yielding a specialist pollinator, the Ephemeral Sporeworm. At time of evolution, 50% of its pollinators by number are Ephemeral Sporeworms, with another 15% being other sapworm species, 18% Xenowasps (an unusual percentage of which are at least partly blood-drinkers), 10% Minikruggs, 4% Nectarworms and just 3% Xenobees.

After its eggs cells are fertilized, the fleshy structure dries up, forming a new, vaguely mushroom-like structure that spreads fertilized spores to the wind.

Other Details
Compared to its ancestor, it has a stronger root system, with various thick, almost artery-like major roots growing out within a few centimeters of the soil line. Its primary pollinator species sucks sap from its upper roots and the base of its stem for a few days as larvae. Having a few major roots be fairly vulnerable to Ephemeral Sapworm larvae during the wet season ensures a reliable supply of high-fidelity pollinators. They specialize in areas that are generally poor for tree-sized flora. They rarely occur in bonespire-dominated oases, and are generally found in mixed-species thickets.