Cave vines

History

The cave vines were found by the tribe x around 200 years ago. They were found while exploring, some old ruins for a better spot to keep mushrooms growing safely. Inside, what looks like a golder ring towards a different sky that they one, which could be seen in top of the jungle, they were standing tall, with several of what later would be called vine bats going in and out of the ring to get to the fruits. Surrounding the rings, there were many bats excrement, and since the tribe already used excrement as fertilizer for their mushrooms and the forest garden, they were ready to try them.
The tribe explorers went back to one of their previous known mushrooms growing spot and used the new excrement in part of it, as a test. The new excrement did not only help the mushrooms grow faster and healthier that the rest, but something else started to grow in that cave. The same vines as they found in the golden ring ruins.
Once sprouted in the cave, the vines reached maturity extremely quickly, in less that 2 months, they were fully grown and spreading thought the cave. This cause some concern, as the tribe was growing mushrooms there to avoid them having to outcompete with the rest of the jungle. If the vines outcompete them, they could die easily.
This initial concerns make the villagers attempt to take the vines down, but this proved difficult due to the vines having a defence mechanism to avoid being taken down. If a fractions of the plant is removed, the vines around the subtracted part will grow very quickly, to compensate, only uprooting the plant or destroying it with fire, will stop it grow.
Of course, any of those two methods would also disturb the mushrooms, which was what the tribe was trying to avoid. At the end, they decide to continue monitoring the situation and only take such drastic method if the situation turned dire.
But as time passed, The mushrooms did not die, but continue to thrive, even with the vines growing in top of them. This by itself would already convinced the tribe to allow the vines to stay but probably nothing more would have come of it. The vines fibres could be used for craft and textiles, but they were not better, that others the tribe already use, even when they did grow faster. And the vine fruits, did not taste well. So the incident, that made them start to expand the usage of this vines to any mushrooms cave happened 3 month after they take-down attempt. A vine bat was sighted near the vine fruits, and shortly after that, the whole colony was there. They create a nest nearby, and continue to eat the plant fruit and produce vine fruit enriched excrement. The excrement would deposit in the bottom where the mushrooms where growing and empower both their grown and vitality, allowing the tribe to stop having to reseed the area with some of the produce to continue to grown them and creating a closed circle, that would not only provide the mushrooms, but also meat in the form of the bats and a new textile, to be crafted with the vine leaves themselves.

Basic Information

Anatomy

After the vines are fully grown, they are composed of 3 fundamental parts:

The structural core, which keep the vine upright, even if the surface capacity to hold itself is minimal. It has an afficity for growing agaist gravity, instead of towards the light, as they grow in conditions of very little light.

The support leaves, this grow from the structural core and attach themselves to anything they can to help support the vine.

The leafy leaves, which flow in abundance from the structural core down towards gravity. From this leaves, several groups of small fruits hangs from place to place.

This leaves are not green, but purple in color and just like mursroom, they prefer to live in places where there is very little light. They grown to fill the area they are in. After they have started to grow, it's very hard to remove them, as the support leaves have the ability to split really fast to create a hight number of leafy leaves to cover for the missing ones.

Genetics and Reproduction

The fruits seem to have the ability to attract very special bats, which eat their fruits and fertilize the land at the same time. Any seeds from this vines can mix with this guano, which in turn help the vine go to other places. If the bats move location.
Genetically, the vines seem to have very little differences between each other, which speak about them not having a sexual reproduction.

Growth Rate & Stages

The vines grow at a normal pace of 3cm per hour, until the vine development phases are completed. After this, it grown is stallen, to a replacement rate. At this laterr stage, the grown is determined by external factors, like how many fruits are being consumed and how much guano is on their base. An extremely rare and unverving view is the vine, trying to fight attempts to get it destroyed. This even is trigered when the plants looses a significant amount of mass. After this defense mecanish is trigered, its grow can reach up to 30cm per minute. While this defense mecanish is not normallly used agresively, if someone is distracted enough, in the vines vicinity while attempting to take it down, they could get tangled in the grown. If this happens, and the person is alone or if no one noticed quickly enought to disentagle them quicly, they would perish and become more fertilized for the vines.

Dietary Needs and Habits

The most interesting regarding their dietary needs is not based, into what they need, but what the do not. This is because, even when they are clearly a vine, they don't seem to tolerate bright light sources very well.

Geographic Distribution

• The Frontier Forest

Related Ethnicities

• Lucarian people