Transformers One spoilers, some observations about flora
This post contains SPOILERS for the movie! I highly suggest watching the movie before reading this.
So I read a great Tumblr post, that I unfortunately can't find anymore, that looked at the trailers and pointed out that the organic plants on Cybertron look . . . kinda wrong. More like an infection than plants living in symbiotic harmony with a mechanical planet. So today on my third watch of the movie (*sweats*) I paid closer attention to the flora.
When our gang first get to the surface, there's a montage of them traveling across Cybertron, and there's actually no plant life at all in those scenes.
When they first see plants, they are confused about what they are. One of them (I think it was Elita or Bee) points them out and Orion uncertainly describes them as "weird not-metal nature stuff."
The movie's novelization describes the robot deer grazing on plants but I didn't catch that; when energon flows across the planet we see the deer eagerly running to it. So perhaps they are capable of digesting plants, but it's not their preference.
The plant life appears to be thickest at the cave where the Primes fell. Vines cover their corpses like spiderwebs. Alpha Trion, when he revives, is partially coated in moss. There are other plants in and around the cave, generally looking prickly and unpleasant. (One in particular reminds me of both a Piranha Plant and of the shape of the gangplank of the Quintesson mothership--like a toothy maw.)
Anyway, aside from the cave, here's where I noticed plants:
the ruin of a Cybertronian city is covered in vegetation
lots of vegetation as the gang flees while trying to transform. (This is right outside the cave.)
they hide in vegetation as they observe the Quintessons
Starscream's base, which is inside a ruined (possibly Quintesson?) ship has a lot of scraggly moss.
Basically, on Cybertron organic plants mark places of calamity, invasion, and decay.
The Quintessons themselves are very organic looking, so my guess is they are the source of the vegetation. They don't seem to actively be growing it or terraforming, though. My impression is they only value Cybertron as a planet to exploit for resources, rather than a place to live.
IMO the vegetation isn't purposeful, it is a byproduct of their presence, just as a trail of slime is the byproduct of a slug. Perhaps spores pour off the Quintessons' organic-looking ships.
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