On the Lashing Vine

Excerpt from A Guide to Harvesting and Harnessing All The Wild Has To Offer

(Pages 52-53, from Chapter 2: Mimics and Ambushers)

Lashing Vine

The southern wilds are home to many things not found anywhere else on Gilden. The rainforest is dense and challenging to navigate, but it is a worthwhile trial. One of the unique specimens to be found in these wilds is the Lashing Vine. It is technically classified as a ‘living plant’ monster, but having dissected and examined them thoroughly I believe it is actually a creature that merely resembles a plant, which is why I have included it in this chapter and not the one on living plants.

The Lashing Vine resides in caves, near enough to the mouth to be visible from outside. It camouflages with the cave ceiling and mimics a plant, its nine, multi-jointed legs appearing like roots. It stays in place for long periods of time with its mouth open, its long tongue hanging down and resembling a vine. The tongue grows warts that look like fruit, and when animals come to eat the ‘fruit’ the flexible, muscular tongue grabs them and drags them up for the Lashing Vine to eat. The prey is swallowed whole, and the Lashing Vine’s body, usually compressed close to the cave ceiling, expands to open up its stomach and make room. An adult Lashing Vine can eat animals as large as a bosgrau, (referred to outside the Southern Wilds as the Jungle Ox)(despite it being neither an ox nor from the jungle). It can also eat people but does not prey on them specifically. The tongue is a muted dark green colour, and the warts are usually shiny, and look like a cross between grapes and plums.

To kill a Lashing Vine, bait the tongue. Lashing Vines have no eyes or ears and instead rely on smell and touch through their tongues to know when prey is near. The bait will have to be large enough and smell like mammal in order to be effective. The trickier part is placing the bait without getting in range of the tongue. There is no one correct way to do this step, but my method was to cover a large gourd in boar fat, with a knife attached to the stem, and push it towards the tongue with a long stick. Swallowing the blade injured the Vine and makes it easier to dispatch, but be warned that you should only do this with a knife that you wouldn’t care if it breaks. Once the Lashing Vine has swallowed the bait and its body descends, revealing less hardened parts of its shell, use a spear to stab at its legs and where it’s attached to the cave ceiling. If it’s not dead when it falls, then stab the center of the exposed base of its body, where the brain is.

Suggested uses for various components of Lashing Vine

The Legs

I have found that despite its appearance, no part of the Lashing Vine actually resembles plant matter beyond its outer appearance. The legs, in particular, are comparable to crab legs, with hard, brittle shell and stringy meat. They don’t have as much flavour as real crab legs, though, so it is best to incorporate them into a larger meal rather than having them be the main dish. They are rather good for soaking up sauce, though, and if you just want a simple lunch, you can broil them in a butter, basil and lemon sauce, which only takes a few minutes.

The Stomach

The stomach is also edible, but I recommend using it for other purposes. Many large animals, especially bovine and bovine-like creatures, have stomachs that can be used as water vessels, both portable and for boiling. The Lashing Vine’s stomach can also be used for this, and is also much more durable than other animal stomachs, so it will see less wear over time than a cow’s stomach waterskin, and it is very elastic, retaining its strength when stretched out. I believe this is due to the fact that the Lashing Vine swallows its prey live and whole, and the stomach has developed to withstand thrashing from within. If you don’t know how to make your own waterskin from an animal stomach, here are the basic steps. Boil a pot of water, then take off the heat and then place the stomach in the water and soak for two hours. Pour out water and repeat this step until the water becomes clear. Then, turn the stomach inside out and hold it in warm water, and scrape lining with the flat of a dull knife until the water is cloudy. Repeat until lining is clean. Normally you would have to be careful not to puncture the stomach but the Lashing Vine’s can take some rougher handling if you haven’t much practise with this. Soak the stomach again like first step while inside out for 30 minutes. Sew one side shut with a double rolled seam to close it. You will need an especially sharp and thin needle to do this due to the stomach’s tensile strength. If you are in a hurry, it would also suffice to wash the stomach and lining once in hot water and use as-is, but it is better to take the time to do things the proper way.

The Tongue

Although they look enough like fruit to trick and lure an animal, the colourful warts of the Lashing Vine’s tongue are not edible for humans, so cut them off when preparing the tongue to eat. Do not discard, though, dry them slowly in an oven or in hot sunlight if the air is dry, until they are tough and pruny. Pierce with an awl of bone and leave in to keep the hole open for now. Soak in amber sap resin and bake for an hour or until sap coating is hard and shiny, remove awl, and thread through hole a piece of strong twine. Use as fishing lures. The tongue itself is a tender, soft meat when cooked. It can be used in pretty much any recipe that calls for an ungulate tongue, though the main difference is it does not lie flat, so it cooks differently to not burn the outside while leaving the inside raw. To prepare the tongue, cut into hand-lengths, and start by brining in salt water, keeping it somewhere cool overnight or for a few days. This is technically optional, but the meat will be more tender this way. In the same water, poach the pieces of tongue, skimming foam off top while cooking, for about two and a half hours, less if the tongue is thinner than your wrist. Remove the tongue and preserve the liquid to strain for stock. Set tongue pieces down to cool until you are able to hold it in your bare hand comfortably, and peel off the skin. There may be darker spots along the tongue, especially where the warts had grown. You can ignore those, it is normal discolouration and doesn’t mean anything. I find the best way to cook this kind of tongue is to slice into pucks about as thick as my thumb (I have small hands, so you will probably want to slice a little thinner than your own thumb) and searing it in a pan. Serve as the protein in a variety of dishes.

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Recipe for Coconut Lashing Vine Legs

A Tilawt’ao recipe for Lashing Vine Legs in coconut milk with vegetables

Ingredients

• Lashing Vine legs
• 1 spoon oil
• 6 cloves garlic
• 2 shallots
• 1 tomato
• 1 and half cup coconut milk
• 1 cup coconut cream
• 2-3 spoons fish sauce
• 1 bunch long beans
• Half southern song-squash
• 2 spicy peppers

Only one metal pot is needed for this recipe. Slice the garlic, shallots and tomato and cook over fire in the oil for a couple minutes, stirring often. Add Lashing Vine legs, and pour in coconut milk and fish sauce and bring to a boil. Cook until Lashing Vine legs have changed in colour from gray to dull red. Slice and square-cut rest of vegetables and add to pot and cook until they are tender, for a few minutes. Add coconut cream to thicken sauce and boil again. Mix together so it is cooked evenly and add salt and pepper to taste. Serve with rice and top with coconut shreds, dried spicy pepper flakes, and soft-citrus seeds.