Flora of Pyracan

Domesticated Plants

Food Plants

• Eanchainn - A whorled tangle of gray and reddish-brown strands shaped vaguely like a brain, the outer portion of this fungi is mildly poisonous, and is medicinally used as an emetic (substance to induce vomiting). It is in breaking the outer brain-like portion away that you find the 'nut' within, a very meaty-tasting dark brown fist-sized piece that is often dried and used to feed the hungry on Pyracan.

• Hysin-litter - A tropical understory tree, it is also known as the aging tree for the way it puts out straight green branches that twist and become bone white and gnarled over a period of five to ten years. It has bright green leaves with eight short, rounded nubs that some have likened to a Pyracani female's teats when with child. It produces a fist-sized round orange fruit with a lightly-wrinkled leathery rind. Inside, it holds hundreds of dark purplish-red oval arils, each bursting with an extremely sticky tart-sweet liquid. It is used as a reddish-purple dye, a natural glue, and when fermented and added to alcoholic beverages, as a strong aphrodisiac, especially when paired with mionta.

• Meacan - A purplish-brown root crop with broad, heart-shaped purplish-green leaves, its tuberous root often grows larger than a Pyracani's head. Used for Zik feed.

• Piorra - An intensely-flavored reddish teardrop-shaped fruit whose main use on Pyracan for centuries was to ferment it into a potent alcohol in which to preserve meat. In 2468 CE, a Hekayti calling herself 'Praell' began selling a subtle piorra wine to offworlders and made a large profit.

• Uachtaull - Also known as butter fruit, these short trees with dagger-shaped waxy leaves produce fist-sized spherical fruits with ochre, leathery skin and light yellow savory flesh with a creamy texture and a high fat content. Most popular as a stew-thickener or condiment when ripe, some avant-garde chefs use it when overripe to provide the sour-tangy taste of nearly-spoiled ham to dishes without fear of contamination.

Medicinal Plants

• Deoirghas - A rough, tannish-green grass found in sand dunes, it has been used for over a thousand years as a cure for indigestion. It has seen a huge upswing in use since Pyracan's discovery, and the quickly increasing number of stomach complaints about processed offworlder foods. A large minority of Pyracani that travel offworld take a pill of deoirghas daily to prevent such issues.

• Mionta - A two foot tall wispy mint green plant with fingernail-sized white daisy-like flowers with a mint green center and a smell like nutmeg, found amidst sandy grasses in subtropical and tropical locales. Its flower petals are dried and powdered to create the drug of the same name, typically smoked in a long-necked pipe. It was originally used in pack spirit worship and by some militaries to make the members feel extremely bonded to one another. In fact, its name in old Rtokki, Sikkit, means wall-breaker, marking the feeling of oneness with the universe that the drug provides. No large groups on Pyracan use it for that purpose anymore, however, as the Church puts heavy pressure on any group that does so, claiming the drug saps free will, and thus kidnaps a person from their senses. Despite this, mionta is legally grown by individual farmers on Pyracan and smoked in many bars on the planet. It is said to pair well with alcohol, making for a happy, mellow experience.

• Woundsap - A short hillside plant with dark green teardrop-shaped leaves. When the leaves are broken, they have strong antihemorrhagic capabilities. The god-hero Bok, from the old myths found in the book A Mythological Journey, was said to have used woundsap to heal his own half-severed neck. While cellular medicine has largely replaced traditional medicines such as this, many Pyracani farmers continue to grow and process woundsap for the large herbal medicine markets on other planets.

Wild Plants

Fungi

• Siriunith – A blue-gray fungus that spreads on sick or dead preas branches in the upper canopy. Extremely spicy and almost fruity, it is highly valued in certain Pyracan cuisines. While it was once extremely expensive due to the hazard to life and limb in collecting it, it is now relatively commonplace due to hovertech.
• Slea - Wickedly pointed, dark brown and surprisingly hard, these foot-long fungi grow at the base of preas trees. While most of their nutrients are gained from their parasitic mychorrizae stealing from the preas roots, they also derive nutrients from anything that falls from the preas tree and impales itself on the slea. When it senses a victim, a slea quickly exudes an anti-clotting agent to keep the blood flowing to the ground, where its mychorrizae soak it up. Prehistoric Pyracani used it (and stores of the anti-clotting agent to douse the fungi in) for spearheads for thousands of years.

Herbivorous Plants

• Biorr – Around 20 species of bamboo-like plants that make up the upper canopy of temperate forests across Pyracan. Rising 20 to 120 feet in height, they feature thin, pole-like tan growth, short horizontal ladder-like branches, spear-like lime green leaves, and the ability to grow more than ten feet in a year. Extremely long taproots and a tendency to grow in dense thickets prevent the otherwise precarious plants from toppling.
• Neaigead – A purplish-brown fern-like bush with sticky, extremely acidic spores, found in light jungle. The wind-borne spores stick to other plants (usually preas) and eat away at the trunk over a period of weeks, eventually killing enough surrounding vegetation to allow at least a few of the spores enough daylight to germinate. The spores were used by Pyracani craftsmen in ages past to etch glass and stone, and some still adhere to these practices.

Trees

• Cruadh - Related to flarewood and found all through the long Midhirrian mountain chain called the Manntach, these massive fern trees can grow over 200 feet high, and have trunks that can reach eight feet in width. They are prized throughout the Ancient Expanse for their extremely dense, but comparatively light wood for use in gunstocks, and for their beautiful grain, almost approaching a three-dimensional experience in the depth of the whorls. Experienced woodworkers have coaxed a wide variety of colors out of this wood, including shades of tan and gray, salmon, gold, almost orange-brown, and even a rich reddish russet when well-seasoned.

• Flarewood - Related to cruadh, it is a thirty foot tall fernwood tree found in temperate zones on the eastern continent. While it is almost as dense and light as the much more famous cruadh, it has such a compact grain that it can be very difficult to work with. It is, however, notable for the fact that its light brown/gold wood changes to a rich blood red when exposed to ultraviolet rays, and becomes a richer red with age. Pyracan religious and ceremonial items are often made with this wood.

• Grinneall - Also known as Siorc's Hairbrush and sea-nut, this scrubby fern tree uses a lattice of exposed roots to stay balanced in the waves and sand of equatorial shallows, looking somewhat similar to a mangrove. Its seeds are quarter-sized goldenrod berries that float through the surf by the millions, and are a favorite food of dathte, who migrate back to the island near which they were born in September and October to gorge on the berries and mate. The berries contain a hard nut within that passes through the dathte unharmed, often dozens of miles from its parent tree.

• Meudaich - Conifers with flat, hard dark green needles that can reach over two hundred feet in height, they are often used for their extremely resinous smell.

• Preas – With ribbed bark and trunks that extend more than eighty feet, these tree-ferns end in a tuft of bright green fronds around thirty feet in width. Preas make up the upper canopy of most jungles across the equator, with a variety of plants and animals digging within its bark and xylem to make their homes. Peach-colored spores gather yearly on the undersides of the fronds during the windy season to be blown skyward.

Vines

• Ealaidh - Stretching for hundreds of yards and growing roots wherever it touches the ground, this forest dweller tends to spread wherever it can find some sun, often choking out other vegetation as it covers an area. Each of its flowers is made up of five pearl-frosted green spade-shaped petals with a small central sphere that looks almost exactly like a pinkish-white pearl.

• Lios - A temperate, shady groundcover with a thick, C-shaped white-speckled green leaf and tiny, pale pink lily-like flowers. These flowers eventually mature into pea-sized bright red berries, from which is derived the strong hallucinogen of the same name. Rare, as it is extremely illegal on Pyracan and ripped up and burned by authorities when it is found, it nonetheless survives as an industry due to the Pyracani's strong aversion to invading citizens' homes. It was used in ancient times by shamans to make direct contact with the spirits, but today it's typically taken by the poor and destitute, and eventually saps the user's ability to tell the difference between the real and the imaginary.

• Saighead - Featuring large white, wine glass-shaped flowers on a thick, parasitic vine that attaches itself to preas trees, they exist in tight harmony with puinsean, who both pollinate their flowers and poison the gallons of water that the cupped petals contain. In return, the puinsean gets water for flight and eats some of the bugs that the saighead’s water kills. In ages past, jungle Pyracani soaked their underwater fencing in the water from these poisoned pools so as to protect their unguli against predators.