Meet the False Plant

The false plants are a highly derived photosynthetic form of abdominimimus, the branch composing of any life form that evolved from the first muscled fungus-ancestor-or, in other words, the animals. Technically this means that they are mixotrophs, similarly to certain animals on our planet. But their mixotrophy seems to have been taken to a whole new level, and they are more akin to autotrophs than anything else. It seems that Horizontal Gene Transfer occurred with their ancestors and plants, and this lead to false plants being able to photosynthesize. In the upper part of the atmosphere, the floaters wander aimlessly and blindly follow the air currents to their destination. At most, they’ll change their height by fluttering the paddle located at their backs. During the summer, spring, and fall, the floaters surf the winds to new destination, producing sugars molecules and occasionally mating with other floater plants. Once winter hits, the floaters fall to the planet’s surface en mass, and most are quickly devoured. Interestingly, the floater plants quickly flood up the skies again once spring comes, leading to a bit of confusion at first glance. How exactly floater plants managed to reclaim the skies with such speed and without suffering from inbreeding was not clear-up until one researcher, Anya Rutkowsi, did a genetic test on several floater plants.

What she discovered was that the tiny organisms had in fact one set of chromosome, similar to plant gametophytes on Earth and true plants on Hades. Thinking she was on to something, she checked if any part of the floater plant’s structure was the sporophyte with two sets of chromosomes. But in her entire dissection and gene sequencing of differing structures of the floater plant, she found that there was not a sporophyte present.

So she tried to mate two floater plants together and found something amazing. The gametes the two gametophytes did join together as a zygote, as expected. But what was amazing was that the zygote then became a hopper weed, a false-plant that was thought to be related to the floater plants, but not as derived-and most certainly not the same species. It turned out that the false plants experience alternation of generations, just like the true plants on Hades and Earth plants, but unlike Earth or True plants, the gametophyte and the sporophyte are completely independent of one another. They experience generational co-dominance.

This is likely an adaptation to the rapid seasonal change Hades tends to experience. During the winter, the false plants survive in the form of the terrestrial sporophyte versions, and in the summer the sporophytes let out a large amount of spores which then become the gametophytes.

One interesting effect floaters have on environments can be seen in the Vale Dos Condenados, which means valley of the damned and is located near the equator. The temperatures there reach a terrifying 90 C°, which is hot enough for the floater plants’ hydrogen vacuoles to ignite, causing the poor plants to explode. This causes the valley to be covered with the glass remains of the plants, which easily get picked up by the powerful blast storms that wave over the planet, turning them into shrapnel storms. Shrapnel storms have been known to be able to overload magnetic shielding and shred an unlucky explorer into bits within a few seconds. These shrapnel storms cause life in this hostile environment to have thick hides in order to protect themselves from the corpses of false plants.
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Oh boy, am I glad to have this one done. The force hiatus was quite the annoyance, but w/e. Artistically, I think this is…okay. Detailed enough, original enough. It’s just about average. Due note though that the gametophyte picture is a sort of cross section of the actual false plant-it’s also lack also of the muscles and blood vessels. I got lazy, okay!

And for those who aren’t familiar with plant reproductive cycles, this may be a bit confusing to you. You can ask me some questions if you like, but I would recommend looking it up first. I’m pretty sure some website explains it better than I do.