40 Conserwire

Name: Conserwire Descendant of: Drywire Description: They send their primary roots searching underground for water and nutrients. The roots branch out into secondary roots. Although these are desert plants they require some microbial soil activity to free nutrients for the roots to absorb, and are tolerant of sandy soils but not barren soils. Thus they exist on the more habitable fringes of deserts and not deep within the deserts. They take advantage of water availability to prepare for times when there is none. Their roots can store water and nutrients long-term, swelling in size with increasing storage needs near each bundle of foliage shoots. The foliage also has a storage function, mostly as a water reserve, and are filled with a spongy photosynthetic tissue that can expand with water. The tubular foliage strand's skin has the combined qualities of rigidity and elasticity, allowing some suspense off the ground and the ability to stretch and swell. On a microscopic scale the elastic fibers cross in a checkerboard pattern. The skin's pores are situated in the regular spaces in this pattern. The primary roots are similarly elastic, able to stretch and maintain an open channel even if sandy soil shifts position and tests it's integrity. The structure is a lot denser as the primary roots are a longer-lived, stronger part of the plant than the more temporary foliage heads, and are also less porous. It's the secondary roots that are absorbent. Food: Photosynthesis Reproduction: Spore stalks (usually the darker, more vertical foliage strands) release asexual spores to the wind which can germinate in sandy, warm soils. Fragmentation of it's root system due to physical damage results in separate surviving cuttings of the original plant. C. mega Land Locations: 5 (Freshwater + Land), 6, 7 (Freshwater) C. xerus Land Locations: 5 (Land), 6, 7, 8, 9 (Freshwater + Land)

Basic Information

Biological Traits

C. mega and C. xerus are two of a few species. These two species help show the most extreme differences between species within the genus, from plants in more favourable habitats that can grow larger and more dominating over the other local plants for light and space, to plants in harsher habitats that go through periods of regular withering and maintain a small size limit to focus on root seeking and quanitity of hads with spore stalks, not their size. C. mega:

C. xerus: