Black Flora

Black Flora
First Appearance	8/50
Census	132 total / 63 extant
Progenitor	Algaaquila
Community and Production Information

Chameleon Obsidishank is an example of black flora.

Black flora are various multicellular flora of the melanophyta kingdom. Most of them are black or have black parts though some lost their colors in hot biomes.

Anatomy

The bulbstalk, a gray colored black flora.

The black flora are built of three major parts: the roots, which contain water and are used to cool the plant and absorb nutrients; the stalk, and the spore chamber. Some black flora also evolved leaves, flowers, and skirts as well.

Behavior

The Greyscale Algae can change from black to white.

Most black flora act just like Earth plants and grow towards the light. However some mobile black flora have evolved ways to avoid herbivores by moving. Greyscale Algae have adapted to change from black to white to prevent overheating.

Breathing and Blood

The Balgalloon has a blue cytoplasm.

Black flora gas exchange is comparable to the gas exchange that occurs in plants on Earth, with CO2 being fixed from the atmosphere to provide building blocks for sugars and other material and oxygen being released during photosynthesis from the splitting of water molecules. They do use oxygen itself for aerobic respiration in all their tissues, and as such do need access to the gas even in parts that do not perform photosynthesis. The many kinds of black flora on Sagan 4 employ various means of bringing both CO2 for fixation and oxygen for respiration into themselves, many of the smaller forms do it passively through their moist epidermis, others have forms of pores, lenticels, and even stomata. These entries into the flora may lead to spongy tissues directly or may lead to more complex tracheal systems depending on the species.

As the product of photosynthesis in black flora is sugar their sap in its pure form is typically clear or yellow to amber. However when witnessed in the field more often than not the sap will be ozzing from damages inflicted on chloroplast rich tissues, the dark pigments from said parts will change the sap coloration to something more smokey, or even brown or black depending on how severe. The color of liquid coming from a wound on a member of the black flora kingdom may also depend on other substances in their tissues, not strictly sap or chloroplast, and so could be any range of tints or hues depending on what the compounds may be within them.

Diet & Energy

The Necrokiss Stalk, a predatory plant.

All black flora are black because they absorb all visible light. This causes them to easily overheat, and so they therefore use a system of roots in order to cool themselves as well as to absorb nutrients. Some black flora are in fact not black, but grayish. Such is the bulbstalk, which lives in the desert and therefore in order not to overheat changed its color to a lighter shade of gray.

Evolution

Algaaquila is the 1st Black Flora.

The black flora evolved from the black algae of the melanophyta kingdom. They evolved right after the gamma ray disaster when Glicker was almost barren. They therefore adapted to life on land and filled all the empty biomes, mainly in the north. The main biome they evolved and varied in was the Yokto Forest.

Locomotion

Black flora are more or less immobile.

Reproduction

The puffstalk that was the first to reproduce sexually.

Though most black flora use asexual reproduction methods, some are more like the puffstalk - the first to reproduce sexually. The one thing all black flora has in common is that they use spores for reproduction. These spores are released from a chamber on top of the stalk that releases them and they are mostly carried through the air. The only irregular is the seedpuff, which reproduces using seeds.

Senses

Marsh-Column Stalkdodges floating material in the water.

Black Flora have limited senses. All can sense where the light is and grow towards it, however some have evolved mechanoreceptive senses of touch, such as the Marsh-Column Stalk that can recognize daily movements in the water and move out of the way of floating material.

Size

The Seedpuff are the largest black flora.

The tallest black flora is the Seedpuff, which can grow up to 8 m tall! The smallest black flora is Algaaquila which originally started the lineage as a microbe.

Types of Black Flora

File:Arctic Seaflower2.j pg

The Arctic Seaflower is a floating type of black flora.

There are 3 main types of black flora: the original microbes of various configurations; bolagae which are floating black balls in the sea and of course the orange spore black flora which are similar to Earth plants.