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Lisgon (Circulufolium diffusus)
Ancestor: Drylicad
Creator: Coolsteph
Diet: Photosynthesis
Habitat: Drake-Orpington Subtropical Woodland, Orpington Tropical Scrub, Orpington Tropical Savanna, Talon Hot Desert, Talon Tropical Scrub, North Talon Tropical Savanna, South Ovi Subtropical Scrub, Obi-Dixon Hot Desert, Dixon Veldt, Dixon Chaparral, North Ovi Tropical Scrub, Ovi Hot Desert
Size: 2.5 meters
Support: Cellulose (Cell Walls)
Respiration: Unknown
Thermoregulation: Ectotherm (Flora)
Reproduction: Sexual (Metagenesis, airborne spores)

Lisgons are tremendously adaptable flora, living across a wide range of temperatures, soil types, climates, and even shade conditions. Only strong shade, or very wet or very dry soil conditions significantly limit them. They thrive in hot conditions, so long as there is sufficient water.

Physiology

Lisgons have shorter lifespans than the Drylicad. Their adaptability, fast maturation, and abundant spores make them weed-like. At time of evolution, they are the dominant large flora in various environments.

Lisgons grow in full sun to dappled shade.

2.5 meters is the average for adult specimens across all their habitats, but the top sizes vary by habitat. In ideal habitats, they can grow up to 4.5. Lisgons continue to grow after reaching maturity, if more slowly. Lisgons take at least 10 years to grow to maturity, at which point they have two layers of notches on the trunk. As they grow, the bark is initially softer and photosynthetic, with less pronounced jagged edges.

Like the Drylicad, a Lisgon has both very deep roots, which can reach as far as the water table in some areas, as well as a network of shallow roots. The exact level of investment in shallow or deep roots depends on local conditions, though genetically-adapted subpopulations are, of course, better-suited for local conditions. With the exception of the bark-covered trunk, all its aboveground parts are covered in wax, reducing the rate of transpiration.

It requires a film of water on its reproductive bulb for fertilization of its gametes. Rain accumulates at the base of its two layers of leaves, much like the water that accumulates in the leaves of a pineapple plant. The reddish-pink tissue at the base of its flower stalk, vaguely resembling lungs, works like a sponge, soaking up rainwater initially captured from the leaves. The spongy tissue is fairly easy to chew apart and is often a good source of water, yet is important for Lisgons’ reproduction. As a protective mechanism, the spongy tissue has a cloying, sweet, medicinal taste with a harsh aftertaste, like cherry-flavored cough syrup, which is particularly concentrated on the dryer, tougher outer cortex.

At night, when conditions are cool and moist, water from the spongy structures is transferred to the reproductive structures, creating the necessary water film.The exact reproductive season depends on whichever time of the year reliably has cool, moist, windy nights. Like their ancestor, they are occasionally pollinated by nocturnal Spardiflies species, which try to drink their collected water and in the process brush up against spores. During the daytime, the reproductive structures dry up, conserving water.

Like their ancestors, they have a complicated reproductive cycle with three reproductive types, which mix and match on the central stalk to form six possible gene combinations.

Occurrences & Microhabitats

Lisgons require well-drained soil, and so do not grow in high-clay soils. Lisgons require slightly more manganese than its ancestor, so they’re comparatively more prone to manganese deficiencies in more alkaline soils, such as especially dry deserts, or poorly-drained places like swamps.

They can survive about two hours of exposure to frosty temperatures (32 F), allowing them to live in warmer parts of temperate biomes on a warm planet which rarely had frosty temperatures for long in the subtropics anyway.

This is a wildcard, using the habitat flavors of Steppe (scrub), Mixed, Woodland, and Arid.

Some of my Drylicad descendants were made to be adaptable, to the point of using a wildcard, but this just feels ridiculous. Fast-growing large shrubs/small trees adapted for hot, dry conditions that can bypass Talon Hot Desert (such as through the South Talon-Orpington Tropical Beach or through dry, hot weather resistance), can live in huge chunks of each subcontinent. I actually had to remove this from Ovi Chaparral and the veldts because it surely can’t be fire-resistant too, though who knows how frequent the fires are. Not even shade in forested environments can stop this because there are no forest/rainforest subcontinental barriers, even if there were large trees already in existence. I’m not even sure if possible clay soil around rivers (most importantly, Black and Niyo) could stop it, since it spreads by airborne spores. Really, I’m not even sure what’s stopping it from getting to temperate environments: if there’s no ice caps, what’s the likelihood there’s killing frost or especially low temperatures? It seems the climate is like that of the Jurassic.

Does the “sweet”, but awful taste of the plant and the collection of water for passing spardis foreshadow the evolution of nectar? If so, I think you could have cut to the chase and made them do that instead, but as of now it’s an okay method of pollination.

Don’t the “lung-shaped” structures have a name? It’s been so long that I forget what it was, but it’s probably some type of sporophore (ugh, guess I’ll have to learn these guys all over again)

Don’t worry about the plant seeming “too overpowered”, by the way; when making the Drylicad I may or may not have unintentionally set it up to be the progenitor of the planet’s most angiosperm-like plants with the whole pollination aspect. Combine that with it being the last of its lineage and I get the feeling that this will be a highly competitive lineage regardless (but perhaps I’m biased).

QUOTE (Cube67 @ Feb 15 2023, 10:34 PM)

Does the “sweet”, but awful taste of the plant and the collection of water for passing spardis foreshadow the evolution of nectar? If so, I think you could have cut to the chase and made them do that instead, but as of now it’s an okay method of pollination. Don’t the “lung-shaped” structures have a name? It’s been so long that I forget what it was, but it’s probably some type of sporophore (ugh, guess I’ll have to learn these guys all over again) Don’t worry about the plant seeming “too overpowered”, by the way; when making the Drylicad I may or may not have unintentionally set it up to be the progenitor of the planet’s most angiosperm-like plants with the whole pollination aspect. Combine that with it being the last of its lineage and I get the feeling that this will be a highly competitive lineage regardless (but perhaps I’m biased).

No, it's not meant to foreshadow the development of nectar, although similarities did occur to me while making it. The detail about the cloying taste wasn't in its 2021 draft, but I added it today because I realized the structures would be a big target in hot, dry areas, and since they're so important to reproduction, there's significant evolutionary pressure to have a protective mechanism for it.

I briefly considered calling them "sponge-lungs", but it sounded silly, and, in retrospect, deceptive.

To be honest, I don't even know what the pink structures at the base of the flower stalk did in its ancestor, so I made up a justification.

From what I can tell about the description of the notchpalm and the vylicad, i believe those organs at the base of the stalk are intended to be the male gametophyte bulbs. They are, in a way, the counterpart to the female bulbs, which are the brown things on the long stems.

^ (ignore this part)


EDIT: the Notchtower of all things actually clarifies what the lower structures are. The notchtower, having the same basic structure as the vylicad, mentions that its female gamete bulbs (the lower ones) are small and hairlike. For the roles that each of these structures plays, see the original notchpalm and the diagram I made for the Vylicad (which is just a (poorly) visualized version of the same process).

^ (also ignore this one)

SECOND EDIT: Wait, I may be wrong, since there’s also the zygote bulbs to take into account. The topmost long-stemmed bulbs on the vylicad are the zygote bulbs, whereas the ones on the side are the female bulbs. That would make the “lung-looking” ones the male bulbs after all, but suffice to say I’m still slightly confused about the matter.

This post has been edited by Cube67: Feb 16 2023, 05:18 AM

Side question: which set of leaves did this organism lose? The upper ones and the lower ones in vylicads aren’t actually entirely homologous, they’re derived from different structures. I only see one of these leaf sets on this species.

This post has been edited by Cube67: Feb 16 2023, 05:27 AM

Regarding terminology, the use of flower implies a far more Terran set up than is established at this point. From reviewing the lineage, the central feature is a stem/stalk which will produce the gamete and zygote bulbs.

In drylicad it shows some of these bulbs as near flush with the central stalk, and some bulbs on thin stems rising above the central stalk. The highest bulbs are for sure the Zygote bulbs as that has been unchanged since their inception. The other stem bulbs are most likely the male gametophyte bulbs and the larger pinker bulbs are the female gametophytes, as the male gametes in notchpalm are described as swimming in the water film on the structure to reach the female bulbs, and swimming with gravity would be more advantageous.

I think just calling the feature as a whole a "Reproductive Stalk" would be more accurate to what it is.

@Coolsteph I should note that, given some recent developments, stalks on the gametophytes in the middle (the medium length ones, not the taller ones on top) don't need to be present (and could, depending on the situation, be somewhat detrimental by being present). Nothing actually gets dispersed into the air by these structures, they only produce gametes that fertilize the other gametophytes on the same plant. I might actually make a revised descendant in this lineage that makes them really short and stubby like the lower gametophores.