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Merlinhat (Merlinia montibus)
Creator: Coolsteph
Ancestor: Branching Cryotable
Habitat: Ovi-Drake Montane Forest, North Drake Rocky Shrub, North Drake Montane Steppe, Ovi Rocky Shrub
Size: 50 cm tall
Diet: Photosynthesis
Respiration: ???
Thermoregulation: Ectotherm
Reproduction: Sexual (spores)

In its local habitats, where very few large local flora grow, there was tremendous opportunity for local flora to expand and diversify...including the Branching Cryotable descendant, the Merlinhat, a slow-growing tealflora that form huge fields of hard, spiny, glass-like flora.

While nonvascular, they managed to grow to such a huge size (by nonvascular standards) due to their intricate, supportive structures of almost bone-like silica, leaning up against each other with ridged stems and tiny hooked hairs, evolving after a mass extinction, and the lack of competition in their habitats.

They live close together in large clumps, using each other like supportive stakes. While the steppe environment may not seem conducive to year-round, abundant flora, Sagan 4’s hot climate (at time of evolution) allow for easier living up on steppes than one might expect, particularly for organisms so tolerant of cold. Still, as an adaptation to their harsh environments, they grow slowly.

Merlinhats so dominate their environments as to cause distinctive microbial assemblages in the soil beneath them, even for miles. Indeed, they grow in such density as to create warmer, more sheltered, more shaded microclimates beneath them, although their dense growth and hard, spiny bodies make it difficult for all but the smallest organisms to exploit. Dead Merlinhats, eventually hollowed out of photosynthetic tissues, form tiny, slightly leaky “greenhouses” with their own bodies, or, if they fall, just beneath them.

Something like a sunflower, their flat photosynthetic surfaces can move to track the sun; the tips of their stalks are less reinforced to allow for the necessary flexibility. They reproduce by releasing waterborne spores during rain or snowmelt events.

To clarify, no respiration method was listed in its ancestor. It seems there's less attention to respiration in flora.

After reading this I feel like I don't understand Cryoflora as well as I did, but I'll try giving some thoughts on this.

I like how it's a species of Cryoflora that's beginning to spread into mountainous regions of Wright previously occupied by mainly Wright Caonach, however I'm not entirely sure it could get this large. It seems that Cryoflora, aside from a select few species, do not have stomata like other flora, but instead have air pores they use to breathe like a liverwort. I feel the elevations they live at and the recent crash in certain molecules in the air may have an effect too, but I'm not as sure about this.