34 Squilstack

Name: Squilstack Descendant of: Squilspill Description: It grows in snaking trails across the ground. They can measure a greater variety of environmental variables than their ancestor and use this to grow in the directions that offer the best prospects for survival. The darker outer tissue of a trail is more for anchorage and grows deep into cracks and soil. The lighter central tissue of the lobe has better water transport and retention capabilities. When desiccated it appears only as a slightly lighter coloured strip but when it absorbs water it expands full of the water, making lighter shades of pigment visible. The ability to stack spongy layers with strong membranous layers of cells and expand them upwards during times of high water availability allows them to reach out to light from between cracks in rocks and outcompete other foliage for light in plant-crowded areas. This helps especially closer to the poles where sunlight can shine at an extreme side-on angle They are more water-tolerant than squilspill and thrive better in places with frequent heavy wetting, but also where dry spells might kill other water-loving plant species and in deserts as long as they are hit by rain or flooding at least once in a while. It often ends up submerged from puddling or flooding and can tolerate this for a while. After the water source has passed it can hold the water in it's spongy tissues for a long time, using it very slowly. They in their flexible, elastic skin have a netted fibre pattern under the microscope. It can stretch but still adds reinforcement. The skin is watertight and waxy such that parasitic microbes seeking water can only enter pores to infest the plant. It is long-lived and slow-growing. The spore heads unpack and expand with hydraulic pressure just like the rest of the plant. Reproduction: It reproduces by growth and fragmentation and flaking (clones) but will occasionally produce asexual spores from the enlarged purple pores, which extend outwards for greater exposure to the wind. Food: Photosynthesis Ocean Locations: None Land Locations: 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 (All: Land, Riverside, Lakeside, Wetland)

Basic Information

Biological Traits

When it is available, water fills the spongy gel tissue between the individual photosynthetic membranes in membrane stacks, giving them height as well as storing the water for drier times. This cross section of the turgid tissues and the membrane layers between them shows how the plant gains volume and height from absorbing water: