The Worldbuilder Diaries: Plant Life

I’ve always had a love for plants and nature, and I think that comes across in some of my stories. I wouldn’t say all of them, but there are enough to make a post about. And since it’s getting toward that time of year when I want to be outside and gardening, it felt like the right time to post something about the plants in my books.

Plants as Medicine

This comes up multiple times in The Relics of War series (and the related books too.) One of the side characters, Coreyaless, is an herbalist and renowned healer, and she knows more about the flora of that world than anyone else alive. Her work saves more than a few lives throughout the series, and I liked her (and her methods) enough to give her a cameo in Serpentus. She uses plants to make healing salves and pastes, herbal teas that can cure anything from headaches to minor illnesses, and in one scene, a concoction to protect herself and those with her from a rather voracious type of carnivorous plant (more on that below.)

Then there’s the Murkor alchemist, Sal’zar, whose work requires him to be familiar with many types of plants and their uses in both healing and warfare. Sal’zar would prefer to use his skills for healing, but he’s often forced to create poisons and toxins due to his people’s position in the war.

Plants as Adversaries

I have a somewhat morbid fascination with carnivorous plants that started when I was a kid. Venus flytraps, pitcher plants, sundew… I think they’re all incredibly interesting. So naturally, this found its way into one of my books, and in typical fashion, I scaled things up a few notches to make a plant that wasn’t only terrifying, it was potentially deadly to the characters who encountered it.

I’m talking about the jungle plant in The Moon’s Eye. I modeled it after a thin-leafed sundew, but allowed the fictional version to grow to a massive size. For a plant that large, it couldn’t rely on just insects for food. When Vardak and company come across it, it’s in the process of devouring a wild boar and some other fairly large animals. And of course, the path they have to take forces them to walk through the plant’s territory.

Sundew have a unique way of trapping their prey, which is why I chose it for this scene over the other types of carnivorous plants.

This video from Floralogic gives a good overview of sundew:

Sentient Plants

I dabbled with this concept while writing Wraith and the Revolution. The Botanaari people are evolved from plants, yet have many humanoid characteristics. They’re bipedal and shaped much like the humans who also inhabit the galaxy, but because they’re also photosynthetic, they’re very green due to the chlorophyll in their cells.

One of the major side characters in Wraith is Daaros, the CEO of VaasTek, a company renowned for its solar tech. Botanaari engineers are the best in the galaxy when it comes to harnessing the power of the many suns scattered throughout known space. Despite his very human-like appearance, there are a few scenes in the book when Daaros’ otherness is very apparent. Botanaari don’t have musculature like humans do, but rely on osmotic pressure and other factors to retain their shape and move about.

And because the Botanaari are plants, they prefer to use materials derived from other sources to build and manufacture. For example, their version of paper is made from compressed lyaan wings (I liken the lyaan to insects, but in our real-world taxonomic structure, they wouldn’t qualify since they have too many legs. But it’s Botanaar’s equivalent of a common fly.)

I had a lot of fun delving into the various aspects of the Botanaari people. You’ll see more of them outside the novel; I have a couple short stories I have plans for that involve them.

Thanks for reading another installment of The Worldbuilder Diaries!