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Description
From left to right, a sampling of five desert plants native to Serina by the start of the Cryocene, 40 million years PE. The three upon the left are specialized sunflower trees, exhibiting varying degrees of adaptation to survive arid environments.

1. Devil's Cigar. This columnar, clumping sunflower is a long-lived perennial. To protect its juicy stems from evaporation and the attacks of thirsty animals, its leaves have become reduced to needle-sharp scales edged in silica platelets that will give a nasty cut to anything desperate enough to attempt to bite into it. Its flowers are small and inconspicuous, born near the leading growth at the tips of the stems and pollinated by small flying insects. It sets seed into the air, attached to small parachutes of fibers that catch the wind. Stems grow indefinitely from an underground rhizome with only a single growing tip, and if broken will die back rather than develop secondary branching. In good conditions they may reach heights of seven feet, but typically become damaged before this. New trunks which rise from the roots replace old ones which have lost their growing tips.

2. Zucchini Tree. This sunflower is a large, tree-like species which grows a single trunk. When young, it is covered in a protective coat of sharp spikes like the devil's cigar but once it reaches a significant height beyond the reach of most herbivores, it stops producing this armor, retaining this defense only on its lower trunk. Its flowers are large and born in groups at the tips of its rounded, zucchini-shaped stems. Once a stem has produced a flower, it does not continue to grow, but unlike the devil's cigar it doesn't die back but instead puts out several side branches which continue to grow upwards; the zucchini tree thus multiplies its shoots by two or three times with each tuft of flowers it puts out. The sunflower tree still puts out leaves as it grows but they are short-lived, being shed during the dry season, at which point the plant photosynthesizes with its stems alone. When blooming, the trees stems briefly take on a primitive appearance with larger leaves in the weeks before flowering, giving the impression of small garden sunflowers grafted to the top of an ungainly cactus. These leaves are shed along with the flowering stems within a few weeks, as soon as the plants seeds have been produced. Because the zucchini tree is a long lived plant rather than an annual, like its ancestor, it cannot afford to produce large amounts of large, tasty seeds that may be eaten up by birds. It thus produces small, bitter seeds in large, inedible pods which break open and disperse via the wind and attract little attention from birds, similarly to the devils' cigar.

3. Desert Bottlebrush. This very cactus-like sunflower grows only a single trunk and never branches. Its flowers are large and showy, pollinated by birds, and it produces large and savory fruits in which it hides it seeds in order to disperse them through the guts of animals that consume them. It grows only small, vestigial green leaves while blooming, its leaves otherwise adapted into large and very sharp spines that protect its fat, water-filled trunk from animals.

4. This plant is not a sunflower but rather a dandelion, a direct descendant of the scrubby sunflower bushes of the Anciskan drylands of 15 million years PE. Resembling a yucca or an aloe, it is still a branching shrub or small tree with extremely sharp leaves edged in microscopic serrations to guard against herbivores, but now grows considerably larger. Its flowers have changed, and no longer born singly, it now sends out long, pendulous bunches of brightly colored and nectar-rich flowers at the points where its leaves meet its stems. Birds are its main pollinators. Its method of seed dispersal remains that of its ancestors - tufted, lightweight seeds cast out to the wind.

5. Desert bamboo. A primitive bamboo, it lacks the symbiotic ants of its more derived forest-building relatives and has been driven out of its preferred wet and fertile habitat by its relative's insect defenders to the cold deserts of southern Striata. The dry environment has had a very significant effect on its growth habit and it no longer produces tall canes but rather exists as a small and inconspicuous clump of spiny grass for most of its long life, hardly even recognizable as a member of the bamboo family. It spends 150 years in this state, slowly building a large and wide-ranging root system through the desert and spreading by runners but never reaching more than 15 inches tall, until some mysterious timer within the bamboo's cells goes off. When this happens, every member of a given species reroutes all of the tediously collected and stored energy from its roots and tissues into producing a single enormous flower stalk that can reach up to thirty feet tall. Timing its reproduction so closely with its fellows across the desert, the resulting boom of seeds briefly overwhelms the appetite of all the animals which feed upon them, ensuring that some will survive to germinate no matter what. After a lifespan of one and a half centuries, it blooms for just weeks and dies after its seeds have dried, having used every last ounce of its energy to produce its offspring. The extremely sporadic abundances of its seeds produce a brief flurry of reproduction in all life that feeds upon them and a very successful nesting season for all the desert's birds, only to be followed by a massive population crash when the food is no longer available by the next season. It is possible that in addition to the protective benefits gained from producing too many seeds for the animal population to eat, the bamboo helps its offspring in another way: by encouraging a population spike and then a mass die-off of the animals which would otherwise potentially eat its young seedlings the next year when they sprout.

~~~

A variety of Serina's less derived bird groups which inhabit desert environments have been illustrated alongside the flora. Examples shown include a couple of primitive seed-eaters, an insect-eating bird which has begun to include flower nectar in its diet, a large, turkey-like, and poor-flying omnivore, a dove-like terrestrial seed-eater, a long-legged falconary which hunts prey on the ground, and a small predatory finch which eats insects and smaller birds.

Description
From left to right, a sampling of five desert plants native to Serina by the start of the Cryocene, 40 million years PE. The three upon the left are specialized sunflower trees, exhibiting varying degrees of adaptation to survive arid environments.

1. Devil's Cigar. This columnar, clumping sunflower is a long-lived perennial. To protect its juicy stems from evaporation and the attacks of thirsty animals, its leaves have become reduced to needle-sharp scales edged in silica platelets that will give a nasty cut to anything desperate enough to attempt to bite into it. Its flowers are small and inconspicuous, born near the leading growth at the tips of the stems and pollinated by small flying insects. It sets seed into the air, attached to small parachutes of fibers that catch the wind. Stems grow indefinitely from an underground rhizome with only a single growing tip, and if broken will die back rather than develop secondary branching. In good conditions they may reach heights of seven feet, but typically become damaged before this. New trunks which rise from the roots replace old ones which have lost their growing tips.

2. Zucchini Tree. This sunflower is a large, tree-like species which grows a single trunk. When young, it is covered in a protective coat of sharp spikes like the devil's cigar but once it reaches a significant height beyond the reach of most herbivores, it stops producing this armor, retaining this defense only on its lower trunk. Its flowers are large and born in groups at the tips of its rounded, zucchini-shaped stems. Once a stem has produced a flower, it does not continue to grow, but unlike the devil's cigar it doesn't die back but instead puts out several side branches which continue to grow upwards; the zucchini tree thus multiplies its shoots by two or three times with each tuft of flowers it puts out. The sunflower tree still puts out leaves as it grows but they are short-lived, being shed during the dry season, at which point the plant photosynthesizes with its stems alone. When blooming, the trees stems briefly take on a primitive appearance with larger leaves in the weeks before flowering, giving the impression of small garden sunflowers grafted to the top of an ungainly cactus. These leaves are shed along with the flowering stems within a few weeks, as soon as the plants seeds have been produced. Because the zucchini tree is a long lived plant rather than an annual, like its ancestor, it cannot afford to produce large amounts of large, tasty seeds that may be eaten up by birds. It thus produces small, bitter seeds in large, inedible pods which break open and disperse via the wind and attract little attention from birds, similarly to the devils' cigar.

3. Desert Bottlebrush. This very cactus-like sunflower grows only a single trunk and never branches. Its flowers are large and showy, pollinated by birds, and it produces large and savory fruits in which it hides it seeds in order to disperse them through the guts of animals that consume them. It grows only small, vestigial green leaves while blooming, its leaves otherwise adapted into large and very sharp spines that protect its fat, water-filled trunk from animals.

4. This plant is not a sunflower but rather a dandelion, a direct descendant of the scrubby sunflower bushes of the Anciskan drylands of 15 million years PE. Resembling a yucca or an aloe, it is still a branching shrub or small tree with extremely sharp leaves edged in microscopic serrations to guard against herbivores, but now grows considerably larger. Its flowers have changed, and no longer born singly, it now sends out long, pendulous bunches of brightly colored and nectar-rich flowers at the points where its leaves meet its stems. Birds are its main pollinators. Its method of seed dispersal remains that of its ancestors - tufted, lightweight seeds cast out to the wind.

5. Desert bamboo. A primitive bamboo, it lacks the symbiotic ants of its more derived forest-building relatives and has been driven out of its preferred wet and fertile habitat by its relative's insect defenders to the cold deserts of southern Striata. The dry environment has had a very significant effect on its growth habit and it no longer produces tall canes but rather exists as a small and inconspicuous clump of spiny grass for most of its long life, hardly even recognizable as a member of the bamboo family. It spends 150 years in this state, slowly building a large and wide-ranging root system through the desert and spreading by runners but never reaching more than 15 inches tall, until some mysterious timer within the bamboo's cells goes off. When this happens, every member of a given species reroutes all of the tediously collected and stored energy from its roots and tissues into producing a single enormous flower stalk that can reach up to thirty feet tall. Timing its reproduction so closely with its fellows across the desert, the resulting boom of seeds briefly overwhelms the appetite of all the animals which feed upon them, ensuring that some will survive to germinate no matter what. After a lifespan of one and a half centuries, it blooms for just weeks and dies after its seeds have dried, having used every last ounce of its energy to produce its offspring. The extremely sporadic abundances of its seeds produce a brief flurry of reproduction in all life that feeds upon them and a very successful nesting season for all the desert's birds, only to be followed by a massive population crash when the food is no longer available by the next season. It is possible that in addition to the protective benefits gained from producing too many seeds for the animal population to eat, the bamboo helps its offspring in another way: by encouraging a population spike and then a mass die-off of the animals which would otherwise potentially eat its young seedlings the next year when they sprout.

~~~

A variety of Serina's less derived bird groups which inhabit desert environments have been illustrated alongside the flora. Examples shown include a couple of primitive seed-eaters, an insect-eating bird which has begun to include flower nectar in its diet, a large, turkey-like, and poor-flying omnivore, a dove-like terrestrial seed-eater, a long-legged falconary which hunts prey on the ground, and a small predatory finch which eats insects and smaller birds.