Devil Fruit from One Piece
I’m probably being fairly ambitious thinking I can come up with 7 decent tips. I mean, we’re talking about plants here. So, let’s just dive into it with the most obvious thing:
- RESEARCH! I say this a lot and people point out that it’s a ‘duh’. Yet, I know many people who don’t bother researching things. They think they know all they need from basic science, television, reading, or personal experience. You might have a good foundation here, but you should still look for more when you want to get into the specifics. For example, look into the different categories of plants in order to get a variety of flora. This is where a person can learn about spores and budding, which I’ve learned that many people are unfamiliar with.
- As stated on Monday, they don’t always have to be carnivorous. I think humans have a fear of getting eaten by something that wouldn’t normally eat us. The thought of a plant munching on a person is creepy, especially if you consider that they wouldn’t have an animal-like stomach. Still, this has been done a lot and doesn’t get much of a reaction. There are a variety of alterations you can do to make a plant deadly without having it be Audrey II.
- Plants are more likely to be poisonous than carnivorous. Being an organism that doesn’t move, they have to develop defenses that don’t require movement. Ingested and contact are real world methods for plants to poison fauna. Fiction always you to play around with this concept, which many people will understand. Dangerous pollen would fall into this situation as well.
- Remember that plants are always around. You will be more likely to see a plant first than an animal when looking around. This is because many animals rely on plants for shelter and food. Why is this important? It means that you can fit in unique flora at any interval. There is nothing weird about the characters noticing strange flowers or coming across a bizarre tree. Ignoring plant-life when describing a scene is cutting out a major part of the world. Readers will fill in the gaps with real plants, but that might not be what you want. If you desire a specific plant style then put it in.
- There’s also plant-life in the ocean. I only say this because I recently ran into someone who claimed there weren’t any plants there. Aside from seaweed, you also have algae, which counts as flora. While algae isn’t that great for creating a mood or setting, you can bring attention to it. Maybe it has magical or toxic properties. As usual, you can play around with this, especially if you want to give ocean-traveling adventurers a wild fright.
- Consider how a plant spreads its seeds, pollen, or spores when designing it. If one uses the wind then their seeds will have ways to ride the currents. For example, the helicopter ones we see on maples. Other methods are burred seeds that can hook onto animals, ones that spread through ingestion/excretion, parasitism, and general pollination. There can be unique ways that you come up as well, which will help determine various features of the plant.
- Yes, we know having a plant scream when cut can be shocking or funny. Talking flora in general can be a welcomed respite from talking fauna. Still, it can get overdone fairly quickly. At least, I think so.
Legends of Windemere 
Great tips! Very helpful for writers. 😊
While researching for a book I just turned in to my editor, I read articles and saw videos of divers harvesting kelp. I found a great article on the giant kelp and photosynthesis. I mentioned that to agree with what you mentioned for tip 5. Great point about how seeds are spread (#7).
I can’t help thinking of the sunflowers at my old apartment building and how gigantic they were. They were well over eight feet tall. And they were small in comparison with others I saw when I searched on the internet. So size is another consideration when designing plants. That and soil properties.
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Sunflowers are cool if you find them in a large group. Tried growing them at home and squirrels ate them.
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They must need a lot of soil. The area where they were planted was a narrow and shallow. So they didn’t survive long. But at least they grew.
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Getting that big, I assume they need a lot of nutrients.
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I liked the take on designing plants. I never thought about the seed factor before. I think there could be a nice story built around someone unwittingly transporting a seed from an aggressive plant and then it germinates and takes over New York.
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For some reason, I think I’ve seen a story like that before.
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Yeah could be.
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One could also consider how plants were used in folklore and certain kinds of magic. Like, a flower that people thought looked like an eye would be said to have magical power over eyesight or used in potions for night seeing, stuff like that.
You have a good point about plants in the sea. Lots of seaweeds are edible, kelp forests are an important undersea habitat, and oceanic algae contributes oxygen to the atmosphere.
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Folklore is a big source of inspiration for fiction. Think a lot of people ignore it. Not sure why.
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Excellent tips, Charles. I think my characters are going to go to a foreign land at some point. They will be unaware of the flora there, so I may well be using some of your tips.
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Glad to be of help. 🙂
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These are great. In my long-suffering manuscript I have algae farms that are used to make artificial meat. I also included slime molds which are very interesting. (Okay, those might be fungus)
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I think I read about algae farms in the real world. Are those a thing?
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People are trying. They also appeared in Blade Runner.
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