Snakeflower

The Snakeflower appears as a sunflower-like plant with petals that come in various vibrant colours.

Lifecycle

Egg

Snakeflower begins as seeds in the parent flower. Like regular sunflower seeds, they are coated in a hard shell. These seeds have a hallucinogenic and mild paralytic effect. The seeds are grown from autumn till the end of winter.

Juvenile

When the seeds are almost ready in mid-spring, the flower drops them. The seeds produce a pheromone that attracts insects to eat the seeds. Once the shells are eaten by the insects, the snakes emerge and eat the insects themselves. The snake's colouring is the same as the colour of the mother plant's petals, and their appearance is that of a bush viper. The snakes then separate, as they live mainly solitary lives. Some may form pairs, but large groups of adults have never been spotted.

Adulthood

After 10 years, 30% of snakes begin to grow a seed within them and bury themselves in the ground. They remain there until they die, becoming fertilizer for the new plant. Those without a seed die where they lay.

Plant

The Snakeflower plant takes approximately three months to grow to full height.

Interactions With Humans

Despite being snakes, the Snakeflower offspring are awfully ambivalent to humans. However, many humans consider them to be an invasive species, given their rapid reproduction. There are several cases of farmers planting a single Snakeflower to take care of field mice and other pests, only to have to continuously weed the hundreds of new Snakeflower plants before they mature. Even then, some Snakeflower plants may continue to grow nearby, causing an infestation. Some more clever farmers will harvest the seeds, scorch them so they don't hatch, and sell them.

A blue variant of the Snakeflower.