Crystal Entourage Swordgrasses

The crystal entourage swordgrasses split from their ancestor and diversified, becoming a common sight all across Wallace, Koseman, and surrounding islands. They are effective analogues to grass, more so than the “puffgrasses”, but with a catch: they are decomposers which depend on organic content in the soil to grow quickly, due to their chitinous cell walls necessitating greater nitrogen intake than the cellulose-based purple flora. True to their name, some species are somewhat stiff and sharp and can cut the lips of predators, but most are relatively soft for crystal flora, their ancestors having sacrificed protection from predators for faster growth.

The crystal entourage swordgrasses, like their ancestor, have two types of crystal: the leaves which appear above ground aligned with the position of the sun and capture sunlight, and the much smaller, mostly hollow spore capsules. Unlike their ancestor, however, the crystal entourage swordgrasses produce said capsules above-ground on skinny, fast-growing, often branching mycelial stems which are only a single cell thick. This allows them to make use of wind and fauna to transport their spores instead. In biomes without much wind, such as the woodlands, they depend somewhat on spores getting caught in the fur, feathers, trichomes, or cotton of fauna which walk over them. When eaten by grazers, some spores will survive the trip through the digestive tract and be safely transported somewhere far away. They still depend on water to bring spores together. Leaf crystals only emerge from the soil in the presence of sunlight, but spore crystals can emerge in the dark, covering the dark forest floor in tiny crystals which seem to float, their skinny reddish stems nearly invisible in the dim light. No species is truly leafless, and even the rare sight of one in a cave will grow some should a ray of light reach it.

Some crystal entourage swordgrasses retain the scattered growth of their ancestor, however others may grow close clusters of leaves. The mycelium is able to “know” where leaves are already present to choose where to grow a new one depending on what’s most favorable for the environmental conditions. Wherever there are leaves, there are also spore capsules, which to the untrained eye can be mistaken for a separate species accompanying the swordgrass but are in fact a part of the same organism. Some species, particularly in regions with cold winters, only produce spore capsules seasonally.

Crystal entourage swordgrasses can be found anywhere where there is organic material in the soil. They typically only start to appear in the third stage of ecological succession where soil has already begun to form, though they are contributors to soil formation themselves as they encroach on more barren regions. They are often among the first organisms to reclaim bare soil following a wildfire, as being decomposers they are better able to survive the stripped environment than true grasses and can feed off of the burned flora and wildlife. In deserts, they may rarely pop up on a carcass but will generally only be found near oases, as they are not especially arid-adapted.

Crystal entourage swordgrasses have a relationship with the Wallace puffgrasses. The swordgrasses grow first, covering the ground before the soil can support anything else and feeding off of organic content in the substrate. However, eventually, the faster-growing purple flora arrive, and Wallace puffgrasses in particular can seemingly rapidly replace the swordgrasses entirely. However, this is only what seems to be happening at the surface, and on closer examination the swordgrasses’ spore capsules are still visible among the puffgrasses’ leaves. In reality, the swordgrasses’ mycelial network remains intact underground, and many puffgrasses have formed a symbiotic relationship with the swordgrasses, exchanging some of their sugars for nitrogenous compounds that they can use to help grow. This benefits both: accepting sugars provided by the puffgrasses has a greater net energy profit to the swordgrasses than growing crystal leaves, which also leaves them with excess ammonium waste, which the puffgrasses are able to use to grow and thus make more sugar in a positive feedback loop. This symbiosis also allows the two genera to compete well with their “shared enemy”, the comparatively light-choking black flora, by growing more quickly than them. Interestingly, the ancestors of swordgrasses were once the hypercompetitive cellulosebanes which wiped out entire branches of purple flora, making this alliance a significant turn for the lineage.