Papisjorn

Papisjorn
(Vinumcrustus acerbus)
Information
Creator	Coolsteph Other
Week/Generation	27/166
Habitat	Fermi Marsh, Fermi Temperate Mangal
Size	80 cm Tall
Primary Mobility	Sessile
Support	Exoskeleton (Chitin)
Diet	Photosynthesis
Respiration	Unknown
Thermoregulation	Ectotherm
Reproduction	Asexual (Fruiting Structures, Seeds)
Taxonomy
Domain Superkingdom Kingdom Phylum Class Order Family Genus Species	Eukaryota Viridisagania Crustaphyta Chitocutea Fenestriphyta Fenestriphytales Vinumcrustaceae Vinumcrustus Vinumcrustus acerbus

Ancestor:	Descendants:
Saltjorn

Unlike their ancestors, Papisjorns live in the marsh, where water is in abundance. They have less need to reduce water loss by transpiration, and large fauna are not so desperate to crack it open for water. Consequently, it can afford to make its shell less opaque, and structurally weaker. Photosynthesis is concentrated in lenses in its shell, but all of its tissues, exempting the shell and roots, can perform photosynthesis. Like Chitjorns in general, Papisjorns are resilient to various poor conditions. They resist drought, heat, and high salinity, and can grow on infertile soil, although their maximum sizes are smaller in less favorable conditions.

Shell

Adult Papisjorns are deeply cleft, like an exaggeration of the cleft in the rind of a pumpkin, forming a somewhat clover leaf-like shape from above. In younger specimens, the clefts are subtler, like a pumpkin. In the stembuds, there are no visible clefts.

The shell is a strong but lightweight chitinous network, mineralized with calcium crystals, and has similar material properties to the pincers of lobsters. The "turrets" contain slightly more calcium to reinforce them, as they are more accessible to herbivores. The opaqueness of the shell varies with the seasons: it gradually becomes slightly more opaque in the heat of summer.

The shell has a faint pattern of fissures, forming diamond-like shapes. Occasionally, it has deep fissures or scars at the base. Tiny pores, less than 1 mm in diameter, dot the upper sides of the segments, within the tiny fissures. Excess water, sodium, or alcohol may leave through these pores; fauna with a keen sense of smell may detect Papisjorns from afar by detecting odor cues from these pores.

Jornwine

Beneath the shell, Papisjorns have soft, slightly mucilaginous, spongy greenish tissue, like a cooked button mushroom covered in okra mucilage. It loosely resembles the fungus-flesh common to crystalflora, if a different color. A few Papisjorn metabolites are also similar to those characteristic of crystalflora. However, despite their polygonal shells and common greenish shell colors, the Chitjorn lineage actually has no relation to crystalflora, with no closer ancestor than the ancestor of all life on Sagan 4, and so Papisjorns' similarity is nothing more than a particularly odd case of convergent evolution, like Earth's kelp (a kind of brown algae, not in the plant kingdom) looking similar to certain land plants (descended from green algae).

Between the shell and the softer interior tissue is a light green liquid, or "jornwine", with the consistency of blood. It has a bitter, fermented flavor, and contains 0.8% to 1.6% alcohol. The alcohol is generated by the softer interior portion of the Papisjorn fermenting a portion of the sugars it gains from photosynthesis, and it works as an effective distasteful element or poison for most herbivores. The taste of jornwine is reminiscent of wine, but salty. If a fauna tries to crack open a Papisjorn to eat its insides, it is difficult to avoid getting a mouthful of the distasteful jornwine. Within hours, the flora increases production of coagulating substances in the jornwine, increasing the rate at which the jornwine gradually seal over cracks or injuries in the flora and forms a sort of scab. The scab resembles the hardened tree resin gemstone copal, but with the color of nephrite. The surrounding shell eventually grows over the resulting scab. Small organisms, such as smaller Minikruggs, can be caught in the jornwine, dying within it or leaving behind legs or feet in their rush to escape. Over months to years, depending on the scope of the injuries, the scab material and any trapped organisms within is eventually broken down and reabsorbed using enzymes, until the injury is fully healed.

Fragments of hardened jornwine are a weak intoxicant if finely mashed and moistened, and can keep stable for up to two and a half years if kept in a dry, cool environment.

Fruit

Papisjorns make segmented, somewhat starfruit-like fruiting structures, which are greatly modified lenses with attached outgrowths of photosynthetic tissue. The fruits of the papisjorn taste remarkably like starfruit, with similar calcium oxalate overdose risks in large quantities. The fruit resists decomposition and remains edible for most fruit-eating organisms for 7–8 days at room temperature. Like many fruits, they can ferment if overripe to accumulate alcoholic compounds. Papisjorns' fruits have an odd, mushroom-like texture.

Within the fruits are dark blue "stembuds", clonal structures similar to Gumjorn stembuds, but far smaller, with virtually no air pockets. The stembuds' shells of calcified chitin make them hard like pebbles. It is often annoying for large organisms to eat these fruits, due to the hard shell and rock-like stembud-seeds. Unlike their relatives' stembuds, Papisjorn stembuds are dense and do not float. While resistant to brackish conditions, being dunked in the full salinity of the ocean for more than an hour and a half at a time kills them, and so they cannot travel across seas like a coconut. Nonetheless, the species has managed to spread widely across a fairly wide range, especially with no competition in its niche.