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the Dagon Knight4014 Posts
Over the last few years, I’ve been basically cramped in a tiny room studying away for college. I guess I’ve always just felt that my course was exactly the same as just about everyone else’s; it’s boring and nobody wants to hear about it, but then I realised, “Oh no wait, my research actually applies pretty directly to SC2, I should probably write a blog post about that.”
I originally was studying ethnobotany, but when the biology department opened a new lab, I was given the chance to move directly into xenobotany. It’s like a lazy man’s cryptozoology, because at least studying specious, speculative, space-bound plants doesn’t mean I have to ever go out searching for the things.
That said, this leaves me in a perfect position to describe to flora we find in SC2.
Daisies:
In this category, I include pretty much any plants that are, like the majority of our own plants on earth, really boring. I guess the only really nice thing about the daisies is imagining someone at Blizzard sitting down and thinking to themselves, “Well, shit. This place looks totally hostile and unfriendly. Let’s just put down some nice looking plants here to liven the place up. There, pretty as a picture.”
![[image loading]](http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/9030/daisiesj.png)
Fig. 1: Daisies growing beside a mineral clump. Also pictured, some SCVs.
My favourite part is that the daisies are clustered around the minerals. It’d be one thing to have them somewhere out in the middle of nowhere, but with this level of clustering we might reasonably posit that whatever the daisies need to grow (other than sunlight, presumably) is something we find in the soil surrounding mineral deposits.
Given the fact that fusion torches are needed to extract minerals, it’s probably more likely that the plants live on something in the soil surrounding the minerals, rather than the minerals themselves.
Carnivorous Plants:
Alright, these are a bit more interesting. There are plenty of SC2 maps that take place underground. Here, plants have had to find themselves some alternate food sources. The most impressive of these is the truly gargantuan pitcher plant. These plants lure unsuspecting prey (in this case, a marine) into their bell to be dissolved and feed the plant.
![[image loading]](http://img849.imageshack.us/img849/2968/pitcherplant.png)
Fig. 2: A pitcher plant, likely about to eat a stimpack addicted marine. That poor man.
Normally, they’d just smell fancy to attract insects. In this case, I guess we’d have to imagine that the pitcher plant is either able to somehow psychically attract a marine or else it smells like a totally hot medevac pilot.
It would be unscientific to speculate on just which is true.
Bioluminescent Fronds:
These little fuckers totally threw me at first, but now I think I might want to write my dissertation on them. You see, at first, the fronds appear to be an individual affair, just chilling out in cave maps. As you’ve probably seen in the caverns, they wave from side to side, like a sea anemone, their tips glowing. They’re generally solitary, as below.
![[image loading]](http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/764/fronds1.png)
Fig. 3: Some lovely glow-in-the-dark ferns. Possibly carnivorous.
Now, in this instance, I couldn’t figure out where the fronds get their energy, I mean, we’ve already established there’s very little sunlight in the cave systems. I could understand the bioluminescence in terms of some bioluminescent mosses and planktons growing out of the sun’s light, but it just didn’t add up unless we considered their light to be an attractor for prey, much like an anglerfish. Ingenious!
They do clump together too, but only nearer map edges… perhaps in an effort to take on larger prey? I bet they'd totally wreck an ultralisk.
![[image loading]](http://img190.imageshack.us/img190/6087/fronds2.png)
Fig. 3.1: This group of plants has formed a very elegant Christmas-tree-decoration arrangement.
Bizarrely, the fronds do pose an interesting question about how lighting works in SC2. While they appear to give off little visible light themselves, objects in the immediate vicinity of the fronds give off a magnificent glow out of all proportion to their brightness. It could be that the plants are mildly radioactive, which would weaken any animals, or marines (as shown below) foolish enough to wander into their reach.
![[image loading]](http://img42.imageshack.us/img42/6080/fronds3.png)
Fig. 3.2: Possibly radioactive! Who knows what damage their little rave-lights do. Dance on marines!
Megaflora:
There’s also a bundle of totally crazy shit that just grows pretty much anywhere you can’t send troops. There are all kinds of dense woodland around map edges, and in the crevices of cave systems there are huge plants that just look like bones jutting out of the landscape. I don’t even want to consider what those things do/eat/drink.
![[image loading]](http://img16.imageshack.us/img16/9262/megaflora.png)
Fig 4: Check this shit out, I have no idea at all. I bet they can turn a planet inside out or something...
I bet they’re totally insane though.
Maybe I should do my PhD research on those?
+ Show Spoiler +I'm so sorry, when I started this I had the idea that it was totally hilarious, and then I just couldn't stop myself. It was all I could do not to add a bibliography.
 
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United States4796 Posts
This is really good, haha.
Well written!
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Hm... Your article is not really credible. Lacks sources and in which scientific journal has this be published? There's also a lot of speculation without any lab testing and studies. Grade: F
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the Dagon Knight4014 Posts
Please, pay no attention to PetitCrabe, he's been trying to discredit me so that his own pedestrian earthbound botany papers will be published.
UNLIKELY, SIR.
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On March 28 2011 09:21 PetitCrabe wrote:
Hm... Your article is not really credible. Lacks sources and in which scientific journal has this be published? There's also a lot of speculation without any lab testing and studies. Grade: F
Yeah really this seems like pure speculation, give me some sources and then maybe we can talk.
But seriously, it amazes me that people can put so much detail into something so insignificant in this game and that's what makes the TL community great.
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Ask Blizzard for a research grant. Maybe you can do research in Azerothian Botany as well.
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On March 28 2011 10:20 Entropic wrote:
Ask Blizzard for a research grant.
LOL! Seriously, submit a research proposal to blizzard. they have a wide enough sense of humor something might happen
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You deserve a medal for your courageous botanical research in the middle of war zones, some civil.
I salute you good sir!
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You explored your ideas well. Sweet post yo
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How well does xenobotany pay these days?
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On March 28 2011 11:26 SonuvBob wrote:
How well does xenobotany pay these days?
Probably in minerals.
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On March 28 2011 11:49 Torte de Lini wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2011 11:26 SonuvBob wrote:
How well does xenobotany pay these days? Probably in minerals.
How much chicken and rice can 100 minerals get me on the market these days?
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This is lol. Great post hahahah
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On March 28 2011 12:10 Entropic wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2011 11:49 Torte de Lini wrote:On March 28 2011 11:26 SonuvBob wrote:
How well does xenobotany pay these days? Probably in minerals. How much chicken and rice can 100 minerals get me on the market these days?
Get 4 zerglings.
Keep two for reproduction.
Two for trade.
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On March 28 2011 12:17 Torte de Lini wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2011 12:10 Entropic wrote:On March 28 2011 11:49 Torte de Lini wrote:On March 28 2011 11:26 SonuvBob wrote:
How well does xenobotany pay these days? Probably in minerals. How much chicken and rice can 100 minerals get me on the market these days? Get 4 zerglings. Keep two for reproduction. Two for trade.
I just thought of a horrible Rule 34 for Zergling mating.
Then again, it wasn't so bad of a vision since I've seen many nature documentaries in my day.
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On March 28 2011 12:21 eviltomahawk wrote:Show nested quote +On March 28 2011 12:17 Torte de Lini wrote:On March 28 2011 12:10 Entropic wrote:On March 28 2011 11:49 Torte de Lini wrote:On March 28 2011 11:26 SonuvBob wrote:
How well does xenobotany pay these days? Probably in minerals. How much chicken and rice can 100 minerals get me on the market these days? Get 4 zerglings. Keep two for reproduction. Two for trade. I just thought of a horrible Rule 34 for Zergling mating. Then again, it wasn't so bad of a vision since I've seen many nature documentaries in my day.
I just wiki'd Zergling farming:
Due to a pair of Zerglings originating from the same larvae, it is often condoned and against certain religion to use those two same lings two reproduce as their rate of successful reproduction deteriorate with each passing generation. One would claim this is due to their biological glands called the Incestation Pit, however recent research shows that it is due to the chemical imbalances of the chromosomes set by the Queen's "inject larvae" innate ability that passes after every 100 creep tide-out.
Zergling Farmers tend to be rare due to one's inability to properly tame, control and/or select a specific zergling even from an aerial point of view when those zerglings mature into the layman termed: "Speedling" deriving from the metabolic boost structure that creates flightless wings for the ling.
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i had no clue victreebels actually existed
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5/5
Very cool, and I can tell you put a lot of effort into this. Great blog.
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the Dagon Knight4014 Posts
On March 28 2011 11:26 SonuvBob wrote:
How well does xenobotany pay these days?
Since you're one of the only people to actually ask a question, I'll answer as honestly as I can: It's not what it used to be.
In the fifties all you really had to do was say,
"I think space is full (relative to the general vacuum, you understand) of microscopic spores that seed life on other planets beginning with basic mosses and funguses as part of a vast panspermia-style project."
Bam, before you know it you'd have a lab, a nice juicy research grant and hot (possibly scientist) women draped all over your ferrari. Now it doesn't seem to matter what I say anymore, people are tight with the funding.
I do have high hopes for a paper I'm writing on how dispersed dendritic structures along cave floors are responsible for a mild photoelectric response elicited from the bioluminescent fronds, whose photophores (and possibly chromataphores?) draw in simple organisms with the possibilities of a rave or perhaps a Daft Punk concert.
![[image loading]](http://img15.imageshack.us/img15/7609/screenshot20110328at111.png)
Fig. 4: Dendritic sensors highlighted, bare anatomy of fibrous frond diagram.
We'll have to see how well the academy responds to my audacious theories.
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ahahahah this was actually kind of cool
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Are you, or do you know Jonathan Ferrier?
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the Dagon Knight4014 Posts
On March 28 2011 22:56 Zorkmid wrote:
Are you, or do you know Jonathan Ferrier?
I can confidently say that I am not now, nor have I ever been renowned ethnobotanist Jonathan Ferrier. While I am a trained ethnographer, the worry with ethnobotany has always been that it'll turn into,
"I'll go where they go, smoke what they smoke, and get as high as they get."
In fact, I have a certain suspicion that the good Mr. Ferrier has long since been replaced by a (possibly extraterrestrial) plant. After all, he's the perfect candidate, a studious man whose academic leanings mean a behavioural pattern that might easily be replicated by a set of complex tropisms? Easily pod-personed.
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It's really cool that you know Jonathan!
We did our undergrad together, he's such a passionate dude!
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I love that you left the notion of taking something too far at the beginning, can only go good places from there on if that's how it starts. 
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EPT![[image loading]](http://img98.imageshack.us/i/daisiesj.png/)
![[image loading]](http://img849.imageshack.us/i/pitcherplant.png/)
![[image loading]](http://img222.imageshack.us/i/fronds1.png/)
![[image loading]](http://img190.imageshack.us/i/fronds2.png/)
![[image loading]](http://img42.imageshack.us/i/fronds3.png/)
![[image loading]](http://img16.imageshack.us/i/megaflora.png/)
![[image loading]](http://img15.imageshack.us/i/screenshot20110328at111.png/)
