Umbagollian Flora and Fungi. This is an alphabetical, slowly growing, list of our plants, flowers, lichens, fungi and anything else living and relatively immobile. Bathwater Kelp. Appearance: Bathwater Kelp grows in single strands, each about as wide as a human arm is long, and feathered with small air-filled pods. The ocean off the coast of the Falling Hills is home to great forests of the weed and the forests are impenetrably deep; a diver from the edge of the Hills once said that, "This Kelp is taller than the trees in the forest of Ex; if it grew on land we could live our lives at the bottom of it and never see the sun." Occurrance: Bathwater Kelp grows in the Bathwater Ocean. And Furthermore: The Kelp forests are home to a wide variety of fish: the Lark, the Chaffinch and the Swan are the most common. Bubbles. Appearance: Until it flowers, the Bubble looks like a pair of small leaves growing flat against the ground. The roots are short, stumpy and thick. It is the flower that gives the plant its name: a hollow sphere of perfect sky-blue with a small, puckered opening in the underside where pollinating insects enter. In the flowering season, stretches of ground will be covered in what looks like a collection of miniature balls which attract a low-lying miasma of bees and other insects. Occurrance: Bubbles grow in the south, particularly around Gum Gooloo Gum Jublet. And Furthermore: Goolooians have a great fondness for these pretty little flowers. Popular wisdom has it that lying in a patch of blooming Bubbles will fill your head with thoughts. (working on a principal of sympathetic reversal whereby empty bubbles somehow generate full heads.) During the warm time of the year it is not rare to see craftspeople creeping quietly away to the outskirts of the town to find inspiration in the flowers; nor is it rare to find them still lying there hours later, solidly asleep. Raymond Tassel's incomplete, rambling, parenthesis-filled and famous poem Impressions of my other country is written from the perspective of a man who has fallen into one of these Bubble-dozes. Hair. Appearance: Long-stemmed, tough grasses which grow from four to six feet in height. They are coloured a startlingly powerful shade of baize-green. Occurrance: Hair is grown as a crop throughout the North-West Flatlands and the province of Gum Gooloo Gum Jublet. And Furthermore: Hair is the staple vegetable diet of most Umbagollians (Cumber Poidy is an exception, as are the more inaccessible parts of the Falling Hills.) The North-West is made up of hundreds of individual Hair farms which, from a distance, blend into one enormous field of brilliant green. The grass has a sharp, clean odour, similar to that of freshly dug earth. The Mud-bum willow Appearance: Mud-bums have long, slender, flexible branches. A spreading tangle of roots keeps each tree sitting high above the mud. Occurrance: Mud-bums grow only on the Kadmudia Gouache mudflats, in areas close to the river. And Furthermore: Individual mud-bums are too thin to stand upright alone, and so the trees twine their branches together as they grow, creating an extensive, mazelike net of branches hanging delicately over the mud. They are inhabited by the people of Mud-bum, a colony which is usually referred to as a village even though it isn't one. The trees were named by an anonymous traveller who thought that their high tendrils looked like their tails of mice buried in the mud - mice with mud on their bums. Nameless Mushrooms. Appearance: A tangled complication of grey fungal stems decorated with occasional bulges. Occurrance: Nameless Mushrooms grow in the leaf litter of the Wandering Woods. And Furthermore: Nameless Mushrooms (so the story goes) once had names, but forgot them because their intellects are as tangled and wayward as their stems. When the first travellers met them the mushrooms said, "Help us! We've forgotten our names!" So the travellers took pity on them and gave them a new name, but the mushrooms forgot it within half a day. Nameless edible plant. While we are on the subject of what constitutes white as applied to foliage, permit me a slight digression to another example of when a plant may not actually be a plant. I have at hand a rare specimen, supposedly from the more humid climes of this world, that is no larger than the tip of my smallest finger. It is comprised almost entirely of a yellow center flanked by white withered-looking petals so tiny that they seem more a byproduct of olden times than functional petals. Its stem is so thin as to make one wonder whether the head can actually be supported, and bears two ragged, sawtoothed leaves that spread along the ground. The root ball is comprised of the usual tangled mess found in most plants. The flower (if it can be so called) has no visible form of both pollination and seed pods; the wind may do the job, or, as theorized by Eqnin Plotz, perhaps crabflies (footnote 1) spread both pollen and seeds. The entire plant has a pulpy, squishy feel to it that no other plant has, and this feel is the main fact that those such as Bint and others have used to declare this flower not a plant but instead a probably inanimate creature. What is so unique as to make this plant (if plant it indeed is, and as I hold it to be) worthy of mention is its smell. It emits a most delicious smell, faintly reminiscent of grease and meat and entirely indescribable to those who have not smelt it. This wondrous smell is an indication of edibility; no matter what part of it is eaten (footnote 2), this plant imparts unto the tongue and mouth a flavor as savory as its smell. However, as rare metals may add hints of flavor to food if used sparingly as seasoning, yet become toxic in larger quantities, so does this plant. If eaten in copious amounts (footnote 3), this plant becomes poisonious. Its victims have been known to smile, belch contentedly, then keel over dead. The method of poisoning is unknown, as are the deadly agent(s) within the plant that poison; Plotzs theorizes that the entire circulatory system, from brain to toe, instantaneously hardens, thereby preventing the flow of vital bodily fluids necessary for continued life. Eau holds that it is those vital fluids that congeal and harden within the circulatory systems, leading to death. I, after a close examination of this plant and its juices, hold that neither is correct, and it is a paralyzation of (footnote 4). Ed: Footnote 1: Crabflies are equally rare insects that look like miniature crabs but have two long, thin, shiny wings emerging from the top of the "shell", and use their claws to deliver food to their "mouths" and deliver pinches to any attackers. The crabfly may be a scavenger of carrion instead of a pollinator, as it has supposedly been observed (by E. A. Juego, that most dubious of natural investigators) hovering around beastie carcasses. Footnote 2: Plotz and Labellum hold that the "flower" has a higher concentration of flavor than the rest of this plant. Tibiallis called their opinion "absolute rubbish" before keeling over dead after eating roast beastie seasoned with this plant. Footnote 3: How large an amount remains undetermined, although Plotz estimates enough to completely cover an average meal. Tibiallis might agree. Footnote 4: At this point in the original manuscript, Dr. Nasii's writing becomes a thick blob of ink that turns into a quickly descending slash. He was found a week later, instrument in hand, dead enough to have partially rotted. His couse of death remains unknown, although his chambermaid swears that at his last meal, with some unknown seasonings he had procured that very day and partaken of just hours before writing this, his final entry, she heard him belch before absenting himself from the table to resume writing. From Dr. Voit Nasii's final contribution to The Absurdly Useful Guide to Nameless Plants ("They may not have a name, but they do have an appearance!"), vol. 37) Table Weed. Appearance: Table grows in short, plump, strappy reddish-green bunches Occurrance: Table weed can be found in one place only: a deep trench in the sea off the north coast of the Isle of Yunck. And Furthermore: Table Weed has become a delicacy, through one of those mysterious processes that transform rare edibles with unremarkable tastes into desireable gourmet items. Aficianados say that the best leaves, gently heated, have a sweet fleshy undertaste unlike that of any other food. The Glass family from Cumber Poidy are the sole harvesters of the weed; they maintain their profession proudly and are the isle's wealthiest inhabitants. Useful Filtermat Described by Lucius Ambulantis. Appearance: Like the name says, the useful filtermat looks like a green mat. Occurance: The useful filtermats can be found on the Isle of Yunck and on Aorist island, where they afsluiten the openings of small caves and cracks in the rock that are partly filled with seawater. And furthermore Because the young filtermats that grow like stems from the motherplant to the inside of the caves are very vulnerable, the adult filtermat has to filter out all the dirt, and especially all the salt. As a result, the water behind the Useful Filtermats is fresh, quite clean and drinkable. Only when the young mats are grown up, the filter opens to let them pass. The water then becomes salty again, until all the salt has been filtered out again.