The Early Temperocene: 140 million years post-establishment
Phyte or Flight: Flora of the Early Temperocene
The Temperocene Era has seen the diversification of animal clades that re-emerged after the end-Glaciocene mass extinction, filling ecological niches left vacant by the victims of the catastrophe. But animals are not the only things that evolve-- it is easy to forget that plants too, despite their seeming inert nature, are equally struggling in the game of life in a quest to rise to the top: fighting, competing, and migrating just as animals do, albeit on a far slower timescale.
The Temperocene, thus, is lush with new plantlife, the warm and humid clime favorable for the survival of dense temperate forest and tropical jungle, as well as vast grasslands, steppes and scrubland home to millions of species of flora that stabilize the food web from the bottom up.
Most influential, of course are the trees: conifers, once abundant in the Glaciocene, have now receded further south and north, and decidious trees, the stonefruits and citrus, have returned to much of their former range in the Therocene. While most of them have remained generally-unremarkable variants of the basal state, a few odd specialists have taken hold of unusual new niches suiting a warm tropical clime.
Coastal beachpeach (Littoraprunus dispersus) is one of the most successful trees in the Temperocene. Adapted to coastal marshes and resistant to saltwater and submersion, this stonefruit tree stands on stiltlike roots to allow it to breathe, lifting its main trunk well above high tide line. Its buoyant fruits are able to migrate long distances, floating on ocean currents and taking root on isolated islands: and while it originated on the south of Arcuterra at the Glaciocene's end, this highly-enterprising fruit of the sea has now made home on nearly every coast: even the northern, non-frozen coastline of icy Peninsulaustra.
Another unique tree of this age is the dwarf desertade (Aridocitron succulens), a citrus species thriving in another biome more common in the hot age: arid desert. Where once chilly drylands spread, now the heat has turned up, spelling doom for many cold-desert plants and the animals that eat them. Yet the desertade thrives. Its trunk, short and stocky, contains spongy tissue that store water, while thick waxy leaves prevent dehydration and thorny branches deter herbivores. But while herbivores are a bane to the desertade, it does enlist their help for a crucial point of spreading its seeds. And there is no better way to draw in thirsty travelers than with a refreshing drink: thus, the desertade's fruit are big, juicy and are less sour than most of the citrus family, a welcome trade for desert animals in the price of transporting its future generations.
Strangely, however, plenty of what appear to be trees are in fact not trees at all. Indeed, even on Earth, the classification of "tree" is a polyphyletic one, with numerous unrelated plants becoming large, rigid towering giants. And here on HP-02017, several plant groups would follow the trend: though functioning quite different from a proper tree.
One such example is the grovegrass (Arbomimogramen spp.), a type of weedwood growing up to eight feet in height. Its kind first grew in such heights following the extinction of their primary consumer, the mison, at the beginning of the Glaciocene. With the tropical Temperocene weather conducive to their growth, grovegrass quickly spread to most continents by its floating dandelion-like seeds, where it now grows as the understory of forests, and at times even dominates large-plant niches solely on isolated islands.
And it is not the only grass to mimic a tree: the notorious saberleaf, in northern region of Gestaltia that was once Borealia, now grows as the twelve-foot sabertree (Arbogladius spp.), largest of a subclade known as sabershrubs and every bit as sharp and abrasive as its ancestor-- yet a favored food of the tall ungulopes known as altolopes, which had replaced the now-extinct girats. Another towering grass, the spiny bramboo (Spinaschoenus spp.), also forms prickly forests reaching as high as twenty feet in tropical regions across Gestaltia, where specialized unicones and badgebears feed on their abundant growths.
One major advantage these tree-mimics would have over true trees is that they were, despite their greater size, still grasses: growing from a singular underground rhizome and sending up shoots as they spread. As many as a hundred separate "trees" are thus just a single plant, allowing them to regrow quickly and sprout up new shoots: making them a resilient and abundant food source that can sustain even large quantities of browsing herbivores, all too common in the Temperocene.
Other, unrelated plants too would reach tree-like proportions. Sandfans (Monofoliopluma spp.) are towering cloverferns adapted for desert life, filling a role akin to cacti with their thick sturdy stem and leaves fused into a single giant plume that minimizes water loss in dry climates. Also abundant are cabbage descendants, the brasstics, which grow into huge, herbaceous mock-trees, such as the swamp-dwelling tropical salaspire (Brassicarbor spp.), and the mountain-growing, cold-adapted mountplume (Montanobrassica spp.), which is a vital food spurce for many mountain dwellers such as ungulopes and cragspringers.
Smaller plants, of course, are vastly more abundant: forming low-ground foliage the carpets plains and steppes and serves as plentiful forage for grazers. Ever present are more-typical grasses, such as the prickly thornbriars (Gramenosentis spp.), and the Gestaltian flameweed (Pyrogramen spp.) with its stinging chemical defenses few herbivores can tolerate. These grasses are abundant as ever as they were prior to the Glaciocene freeze, and today are vastly diverse: each species with unique defences that favor niche partitioning among grazers.
Another extremely successful plant are the descendants of clover: initially introduced during planetary establishment as a forage crop, the plant has since flourished and filled many niches of herbaceous plants of virtually nearly every shape and size. Some are similar to the ancestral form, such as goldtip trefoil (Prototrifolium aureum), but others developed bigger leaves with more leaflets, giving rise to the cloverferns like the pinkpom cloverfern (Polyfolium rosae), which often spread across the forest floor. Some cloverferns have adopted unusual traits in the ever-enterprising quest to expand, such as coalclove (Erythrotrifolium trichromus), with distinctive red coloration due to having such quantities of red and black pigment as to almost mask the still-present chlorophyll, partly as a warning to grazers of its distasteful flavor, and partly to harness Beta's faint rays during Beta-twilight.
Cloverferns, however, have long branched out into many diverse niches in the race for sunlight. Some, such as clovervines (Vitifolium spp.), have taken advantage of nearby woody plants as support to grow taller than any typical herbaceous plant, anchoring itself with grasping tendrils modified from branching stems. Others, such as torchbush (Foliofrutex spp.) become shrub-like bushes with more rigid stems and feeding low-level browsers on scrubland and forest floors. Some cloverferns have even taken to the water, like pondspinners (Aquatrifolium spp.), with large leaves floating on the surface and flowers on stalks that breach the surface during suitable breeding conditions.
The flooded world of the Temperocene, in fact, is highly conducive to aquatic plants, and many have not simply taken to rivers and lakes but to the sea: and are primarily responsible for the sheer diversity of herbivorous aquatic megafauna, a niche rare on Earth but extremely prevalent here. Primarily, grasses dominate the seas, alongside kelp and algae (which technically are not true plants), descended mostly from two varieties: the floating coast kudzu and the rooted undergrass.
Coast kudzu has reached peak diversity, forming blankets of vegetation on the surface that harbor mini-ecosystems of their own. The highly-prolific floatvine (Pelagogramen spp.) grows massive branching rhizomes extremely fast as to cover massive areas of surface water in the span of a few days, kept only in check by the grazing of hamatees such as whaleruses, its sheer abundance being key to support such enormous marine herbivores. Other coast kudzu, however, are far less spreading: the thick raftroot (Mareradix spp.) consists mostly of a single thick nutrient-storing rhizome, allowing it to thrive in colder seas and remain dormant until conditions are right, or the plantform (Pulpitophyton spp.), which forms small but dense mats of stems and roots: dense enough that small, sea-going ratbats occasionally roost on them, and also have been instrumental in allowing terrestrial minifauna, like duskmice, furbils, rattiles and various invertebrates, to raft from continent to continent and reach isolated islands, whenever such animals washed out to sea by accident or intentionally hitched a ride.
The other clade of marine grasses, the bottom-growing undergrass, in the meantime is mimicking the dynamics found on dry land by developing specific defenses to ward off herbivores: but, more often than not, ends up favoring the evolution of specialized herbivores that specifically evolve to breach their defenses. Whiteblot (Albomarinogramen detestus) is one such species, bearing distasteful compounds that it advertises with white markings easily visible in the blue light of the sea, and thornocopia (Spinatomar aquasentis) possesses spiny stems and leaves to deter herbivores from eating it. However, over time, sea grazers gradually develop resistances to such methods of defense, and a familiar trend begins to emerge: niche partirioning, rotational grazing, and specialized herbivores adapted to tackle one defense but not the other-- a dynamic nigh-identical to the plains grazers on dry land.
Pressured by herbivore "predation", competition with neighbors and the constant struggle to beat rival neighbors in the quest for water and sunlight, the merciless brutality of nature quickly surfaces in the plant kingdom. Nature red in tooth and claw is most evident in animals, visibly devouring and hunting one another in exuberant displays of the battle for survival. But plants are no exception. They too are living creatures simply operating at a slower frame of time, seemingly inanimate in an animal's perspective. But they, too, fight one another, compete with one another-- and at times, even actively try to kill one another and the animals that eat them.
One of the more blatantly vicious examples is the mace-bud destrotor (Vehemephyton telumgermen), a grass descended from the now-less common bleedweed. Stalk upon stalk, it rises along the ground as its rhizome steadily creeps sideways beneath the surface. But unlike its now-increasingly-rare relatives, the destrotor does not take kindly to competition. As each new stalk rises, it emerges as a spiral, with a tip covered in pointed hooked barbs, and once grown, the stalk gradually unfurls, spinning its barbed tip in circles like a mace in slow motion. With each spin, lasting about a day, it tears apart, uproots and impales neighboring plants within an eight-inch radius, purposefully killing off any competition for sunlight and soil nutrients and creating ominous, empty circles of barren soil around each new stalk that rises from the soil.
Some plants, in fact, not only eradicate their neighbors, but actively prey upon them. The white witherer (Radixavenator vampyrium) is a cloverfern growing along damp shady places like the forest floor, where, while seemingly innocent and even beautiful with its pale pinkish-white leaves, beneath the ground is up to something far more insidious. Its roots snake out long distances in search of other plants' roots, and upon detection, latch onto them, pierce their outer layer, and release smaller rootlets to grow inside the host tissues and begin draining them of nutrients. So dedicated is the white witherer to attacking other plants that it has lost nearly all its chlorophyll, instead getting all its energy from stolen sustenance from other, photosynthesizing plants, which turn yellow and droop all around while it flourishes. Ultimately, the white witherer eventually runs out of neighbors to feed on, and as energy dwindles, the mature plant blooms, spreads its seed, and dies, leaving its next generation to continue its silent, botanical massacre.
Not only other plants are the victims of the Temperocene's ferocious flora: animals too, particularly herbivores, are the main enemy of most plants, which try to defend themselves in many different ways from the eager gnawing teeth of rodent grazers big and small alike. Some sequester bad-tasting chemicals, develop hard outer coats, or produce thorns that make them painful to consume. But due to extreme herbivore pressure in its native range, one member of the weedwood family, the stinging barbriar (Mortiphyton vireum), takes its arsenal to a frightening new level. Coated with long, yellow spines, it secretes from the root of each one a potent cocktail of enzymes that, if injected into any would-be consumer, acts as a potent cytotoxin that causes cell death, internal bleeding, organ failure and even tissue liquefaction in minutes, with the barbed spines easily breaking off and remaining embedded in the target to continue delivering their deadly dose. Larger herbivores are lucky enough to leave with grisly swollen scars at worst, but small grazers, such as small hare-like hamtelopes, can easily acquire a lethal dose in as little as three or four spines, collapsing within minutes in violent spasms as they foam at the mouth and bleed profusely from every orfice as hemotoxic effects rupture their blood vessels-- victims of the planet's first venomous plant.
And while the barbriar simply targets animals in defense, other, more enterprising plants attack small creatures as a source of nutrition, especially in poor soils lacking in nitrogen-- they have actively become carnivorous, trapping insects and digesting them to acquire vital and essential compounds otherwise lacking in their environment. A grass known as the shmuckbait (Flosacaptionem spp.) is a key example: native to nitrogen-poor deserts, it spreads its seeds and pollen by wind, and thus has no need for pollinators. Yet still, it produces colorful flowers with sweet-smelling nectar for an entirely different purpose: hungry bugs drawn by the scent and signals home in to feed-- only to find themselves on the menu as they get stuck onto the sticky petals that then close over them to begin digestion.
Carnivory in plants, however, sometimes requires a little help, and a more indirect means of predation. The gluefern (Glutinofolium spp.) is a marshland cloverfern that, like the shmuckbait, produces sticky secretions to trap prey: but rather than emitting a sweet fragrance to lure pollinators, it instead emits the pungent smell of rotting meat to draw in scavengers such as carrion flies. But the gluefern cannot digest them on its own, as it lacks the necessary enzymes: instead, it enlists the symbiotic services of a specialized beetle: the gluefern bootbug (Decipulahabitus defecatum). The bootbug, equipped with specialized hairs on its feet and antennae and a waxy coating on its wing cases, is able to scurry about the gluefern without getting stuck: and feeds on the unlucky insects that get trapped in the plant. The plant basically functions as both home and prey trap, much like a spider's web, and in return, the beetle's droppings are a source of nitrogen compounds, now pre-digested and packaged for consumption. Thus plays out a peculiar case of mutualism: the plant acts as a home for the beetle that provides it with easy food-- and all the beetle needs in turn is to pay its rent with poop.
The Temperocene has proven itself to be a lush haven for animal life to rapidly diversify into complex ecological webs, as unusual adaptations create ever more complicated interspecies relationships. Yet, among a world of increasingly unusual beasts, one must not forget the living things that make all them possible: living things that, despite appearing as mere scenery, are every bit as alive as their faunal counterparts: and every bit subject to evolution in all its beautiful, bizarre, and brutal ways.
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