Pinokes
| Pinokes | ||
|---|---|---|
| (Latabies ssp.) | ||
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| Information | ||
| Creator | Disgustedorite Other | |
| Week/Generation | 27/167 | |
| Habitat | Wallace, Kosemen | |
| Size | 1-16 meters tall | |
| Primary Mobility | Sessile | |
| Support | Unknown | |
| Diet | Photosynthesis | |
| Respiration | Passive (Stomata, Lenticels) | |
| Thermoregulation | Ectotherm | |
| Reproduction | Sexual (Flowers, Berries, Seeds) | |
| Taxonomy | ||
| Domain Kingdom Subkingdom Division Class Order Superfamily Family Genus Species | Eukaryota Phoenoplastida Phoenophyta (info) Rhagioanthia Phoenopoopsida Canistropsilales (info) Yuccapinacea Yuccapinaceae Latabies Latabies ssp. | |
| Ancestor: | Descendants: |
|---|---|
Pinokes split from their ancestor and diversified into a myriad of shade-tolerant trees and shrubs with bitter tannin-filled needle leaves, primarily under pressure from black flora such as the snowflake obsidioaks. Members of the genus can be found as shrubs in the oldest growth of most biomes, but the tree-sized forms hold a particular niche beneath the dark canopies taking advantage of the heat-deflecting adaptations of their shadowy competitors.
The shift to a flatter, wider crown in pinokes compared to their ancestor serves to sprawl their photosynthesizing surface beneath taller obsidioaks in forests and shrublands. This would seem useless at first due to the shadows that black flora cast, but as midday arrives, air flow and luck makes some patches of the dark forests grow very hot, activating the snowflake obsidioaks' camoplasts. The taller trees' leaves now white, sunlight is able to filter down to the forest floor—or it would, if a sprawling pinoke isn't growing in that exact location to catch it all. In this way, pinokes are able to grow very large in the shadows which choke out most other non-obsidian flora of their size—and as the obsidioaks eventually die of disease or old age, pinokes are even able to take over many acres of forest and shrubland, as being seed plants allows them to escape the leaf litter barrier more often than most black flora can.
Though juvenile pinokes shed their branches every year, as most ferines do, as they approach full size they switch to only shedding needles and lignifying their adult branches, as well as thickening their trunk. This causes their cross-hatched bark texture and "lip" to fade with age. Shedding needles, combined with their wide crown to spread them far, creates a leaf litter barrier that restricts the germination of competing flora on the ground surrounding them. For the smallest bush-like forms, this prevents a second plant from growing in and over them from underneath, while larger forms are able to restrict other trees and shrubs.
Pinokes have pink, three-petal flowers which are usually pollinated by xenobees and minibees. The berries are sour, like those of their ancestor. They have reduced the number of seeds inside to two, forming a double pit. This allows the seeds to be bigger and therefore produce bigger seedlings, which aids them in pushing through leaf litter. They rely on various frugivores to spread the seeds to new locations, and were brought from Wallace to Kosemen by the ferry quail.
There are many species of pinoke. As mentioned before, small forms can be found in most biomes; their arid adaptations inherited from their ferine ancestors combined with their bitter taste and needle-like leaves allows them to hold out in deserts, tundra, plains, and, for the smallest species, even above the treeline in the mountains. In all of these places, they prefer the shade of rocks or other flora if possible. Larger species up to around 8 meters are common in old growth shrublands, while most larger than that prefer woodlands. In some montane forests and shrublands, these can form the dominant late-succession flora over black flora, despite not being able to get quite as large.