Psychic_Llamas
Wizard in the Making
Ok, been a while for a couple of days so heres my input on cool plants (all the stuff im posting here is actually factual, and i can find examples if you desire):
NOTE you might want to skip this if you dont want to learn lol:
to start im studying biology at Uni and come across some rally cool plants. here are a few descriptions (i cant be bothered looking for pictures)
a lot of grass seeds have this thing called an 'awn' which, when wet, spirals like a cork screw and 'drills' into the ground. however! this 'screw' can ALSO drill into the flesh of animals if it gets stuck in their fur!
Orchid have evolved really unusual flowers that have special 'pollen sac' things that get shot at bugs trying to get to the nectar, the pollen sac is sticky and so it sticks to the bug. then when the bug moves to the next flower it can get the pollen sac stuck onto an even STICKIER (its REALLY sticky) part which then fertalises the flower.
Venus Fly Traps (im sure every one knows these) have tiny hairs on the inside of their clamp like leaves and when touched it stimulated the leaves to close trapping bugs inside.
Pitcher Plants (once again id be surprised if someone didnt know what these were) are large modified leaves that secrete digestive/acidic juices, as well as sweet nectar inside their jug like leaves. there are billions of downward facing hairs o nthe inside of the jug, which makes it abnormally slippery and so bugs fall in, but because they point down, they cant climb back out and dissolve in the acid-ey goodness.
Sun Dew plants (common in australia) are covered in hair like things that secrete a really sticky, substance, which is also sweet. this is good for bugs because they come to steal the sweet sticky stuff and take it to their nest, but they find they get stuck to it, and lo and behold it actualy turns out to be a digesting fluid ,so the bug ends up getting digested. in addition, when one of the hairs is touched the vine curls around the prey making more sticky hairs touch it, holding it in place.
there are a lot of seed pods which have really cool ways of spreading their seeds. you might be familiar with some that with even the slightest touch they start popping and shoot seeds everywhere! this is caused by the plant forcing large ammounts of water into the seed pod which raises the pressure. if part of the pod is weaker (which there usually are) and is disterbed the pressure will cause the seeds to shoot out.
There are a lot of plants that mimic animals, such as one orchid which looks, and SMELLS like a female wasp. this attracts male wasps and they try to mate with the flower/wasp, but the flower just sticks its stiky pollen sacs to the male wasp's butt
and then there are the plethora of toxic plants, such as some ferns which have a lot of cyanide in them.
i could go on but youre all probably bored from this little Botany lesson
basically from the above we can have units that:
have evolved 'arms' that have large seed pod liek structures on the end. the plant-creature could force water into these pods to cause massive ammounts of seeds to explode out onto enemies. you could say that the pressure is great enough, and the seeds hard enough, that it would be like getting shot by a shotgun. either that or you could have the seeds germinate and grow when they hit the target, thus growing roots and all into the enemies flesh. yummy .
You can have some form of defensive slow movingvine unit that has uber sticky tenticles that smell sickly sweet and lull enemies into comming closer. the tentacles then stick to and wrap the enemies up to digest them.
you could have plants like the venus fly trap which traps enemies in cage like leaf vices and digests them again.
all this yummy digestion!
then we can draw on fictional things like the Mandrake, which is supposed to have a deadly cry. these could do area damage to enemy units adjacent to it.
then there are things like the vines from jumanji. poisonous plants that grows faster than bamboo and shoots toxic barbs from the flowers among other things.
the possibilites are truely endless!
Spoiler :
NOTE you might want to skip this if you dont want to learn lol:
to start im studying biology at Uni and come across some rally cool plants. here are a few descriptions (i cant be bothered looking for pictures)
a lot of grass seeds have this thing called an 'awn' which, when wet, spirals like a cork screw and 'drills' into the ground. however! this 'screw' can ALSO drill into the flesh of animals if it gets stuck in their fur!
Orchid have evolved really unusual flowers that have special 'pollen sac' things that get shot at bugs trying to get to the nectar, the pollen sac is sticky and so it sticks to the bug. then when the bug moves to the next flower it can get the pollen sac stuck onto an even STICKIER (its REALLY sticky) part which then fertalises the flower.
Venus Fly Traps (im sure every one knows these) have tiny hairs on the inside of their clamp like leaves and when touched it stimulated the leaves to close trapping bugs inside.
Pitcher Plants (once again id be surprised if someone didnt know what these were) are large modified leaves that secrete digestive/acidic juices, as well as sweet nectar inside their jug like leaves. there are billions of downward facing hairs o nthe inside of the jug, which makes it abnormally slippery and so bugs fall in, but because they point down, they cant climb back out and dissolve in the acid-ey goodness.
Sun Dew plants (common in australia) are covered in hair like things that secrete a really sticky, substance, which is also sweet. this is good for bugs because they come to steal the sweet sticky stuff and take it to their nest, but they find they get stuck to it, and lo and behold it actualy turns out to be a digesting fluid ,so the bug ends up getting digested. in addition, when one of the hairs is touched the vine curls around the prey making more sticky hairs touch it, holding it in place.
there are a lot of seed pods which have really cool ways of spreading their seeds. you might be familiar with some that with even the slightest touch they start popping and shoot seeds everywhere! this is caused by the plant forcing large ammounts of water into the seed pod which raises the pressure. if part of the pod is weaker (which there usually are) and is disterbed the pressure will cause the seeds to shoot out.
There are a lot of plants that mimic animals, such as one orchid which looks, and SMELLS like a female wasp. this attracts male wasps and they try to mate with the flower/wasp, but the flower just sticks its stiky pollen sacs to the male wasp's butt
and then there are the plethora of toxic plants, such as some ferns which have a lot of cyanide in them.
i could go on but youre all probably bored from this little Botany lesson
basically from the above we can have units that:
have evolved 'arms' that have large seed pod liek structures on the end. the plant-creature could force water into these pods to cause massive ammounts of seeds to explode out onto enemies. you could say that the pressure is great enough, and the seeds hard enough, that it would be like getting shot by a shotgun. either that or you could have the seeds germinate and grow when they hit the target, thus growing roots and all into the enemies flesh. yummy .
You can have some form of defensive slow movingvine unit that has uber sticky tenticles that smell sickly sweet and lull enemies into comming closer. the tentacles then stick to and wrap the enemies up to digest them.
you could have plants like the venus fly trap which traps enemies in cage like leaf vices and digests them again.
all this yummy digestion!
then we can draw on fictional things like the Mandrake, which is supposed to have a deadly cry. these could do area damage to enemy units adjacent to it.
then there are things like the vines from jumanji. poisonous plants that grows faster than bamboo and shoots toxic barbs from the flowers among other things.
the possibilites are truely endless!