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They're in the flower boxes at work. Eesh.Josh_Kablack wrote:Cripes, I got some of that out back next to the nightshade, poison ivy, and morning glories and didn't even know it was poisonous.PhoneLobster wrote:Taro
Taro Fields - You may be familiar with Taro (or a close enough relative to get an idea of it's look) as "elephant's ears".[
3) While various aroids are edible many are horribly horribly poisonous.
The hell are you trying to grow, Josh?Josh Kablack wrote: Cripes, I got some of that out back next to the nightshade, poison ivy, and morning glories and didn't even know it was poisonous.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
This is all great. I think I'm going to have to throw in some kind of Lotus Forest floating on the lake. Magic Nardoo might be the main thing growing on the mountains that allows some kind of monster encounters to be viable.PhoneLobster wrote:
Actually, assuming that you use magic to make watery plants viable crops despite constant rain... you might find some information on fresh water aquatic crops useful.
Rice
Rice Fields - For fantasy purposes anyway, are those multi tiered things you see on hill and mountainsides. Water is channeled in from a natural waterway or reservoir at the top and carefully irrigated through everything.
Rice Paddies As Combat Terrain - Rice paddies are complex multi-teired semi-vertical mazes of tiny goat trails and shallow slushy muddy ponds with low walls (which could be soft clay or earth, or dry or even mortared stone or brick), the ponds could range from "dry" (but muddy) to knee deep, and may have rice in that could provide some grassy concealment late in season and no concealment at all when early in season. The major effects on combat is that you are going to be over there and the place you want to be will be up there and it won't be entirely clear how to get there, but it is entirely clear you are first going to have to slog your way out of this mud puddle you are stuck in.
Magic Rice - Real world rice needs carefully regulated irrigation and (fuzzy memory here) actually needs to be dried out as part of the final process to not just harvest it but to actual force it to produce actual rice heads at all. Magic rice in rainy land clearly just gets around that somehow and it's only demand is "moar water!"
Taro
Taro Fields - You may be familiar with Taro (or a close enough relative to get an idea of it's look) as "elephant's ears". But go have a look.. An important thing to remember though is that traditionally Taro was grown on relatively small scales. So for instance you could easily have your Rice Paddy village have what amounts to a couple of paddies dedicated to Taro instead.
Taro As Combat Terrain - Depth wise it's a lot like a rice paddy. Varying with crop phase (and Taro variety) from "dry" mud to shallow water. But the plants, are big, have trunks, potentially huge leaves (again depending on variety and crop phase), and could grow pretty thick (it's shady down in there). Also some forms will throw off runners from the base of the plant which will lace the field with natural trip wires that could easily be underwater, just at ankle grabbing height in the slippery or squelchy mud.
Taro As A Poison - Taro is a popular food crop in the real world from the Pacific islands to China. But there are a lot of sorts of Taro almost all of them (barring some typical common name mix ups that aren't "real" Taro) are Colocasia esculenta. This is interesting for several reasons.
1) That is a single species, it has something like over four hundred varieties, many never flower, many in fact are natural mutations rather than seedlings as many parent plants never flower but the species is especially prone to throwing mutant shoots. It takes a dedicated Taro specialist to tell the difference between many of these species.
2) This makes Taro an Aroid, and as such a member of a plant family that includes the SMALLEST flower in the world and the LARGEST one. Cool?
3) While various aroids are edible many are horribly horribly poisonous. The sort of poison that immediately feels like hot burning needles in your mouth, then it gives you hideous stomach pains, damages your liver, sends you on a totally bad vision trip, and kills you! TARO IS NOT AN EXCEPTION. So you need to cook your Taro properly. You need to identify your Taro correctly (remember, over 400 mutants of the SAME damn plant, and you need a life time expert to be sure!). Even some edible forms can be rather poisonous unless properly treated and might even cause irritation if you get sap (or the freaky icky jelly on the exterior of the base of the plant's tuber) on you. And even mild edible forms might be slightly "tingly" if eaten raw, and are potentially linked with high rates of honest to god LEPROSY.
Magic Taro - Again you are making it rain resistant. But you might also make it GIANT! Because that is awesome. Also you probably have special herbal super poisonous magic Taros for poisoning fools and going on shaman voodoo trips with. Odds are good getting the raw untreated sap of those ones on you burns like acid then makes all your limbs fall off with instantaneous leprosy.
Water Ferns
Fern Fields - OK I don't know anyone who does this. However there IS a certain water fern in Australia that was widely used by Aboriginals as a food plant. They just never grew it as a crop and harvested it wild. So it just grows around the edges of waterways, out of the water it looks like clover, only it never flowers and every single leaf is ALWAYS a "four leaf clover". In the water it floats it's clover leaves like lily pads. Now the thing is you COULD grow this stuff in mass. And as such would probably grow it in large shallow paddies or any available lake or body of water. I have even seen it grown in curtains through running water coming off spill ways and waterfalls. You could totally incorporate this right into a rice paddy structure, maybe even on the walls.
Nardoo as Combat Terrain - Nardoo grows in long, stringy, inter-entangled runners from which the leaf stalks uncurl in a spiral. It's very much trip over material, almost a net. You could totally pull up a sheet of the stuff as an almost instant camouflage blanket. Also those webs and nets not only run along from the bottom of a pond or down a spillway... they ALSO extend like a raft over deeper water, causing a potential for depth confusion and sudden plunges into water deeper than you expected. With a net on top of or entangled around you.
Nardoo as a Poison - The edible part of nardoo are its spore cases, which taste a bit like nuts. You can eat a few raw... if you feel game enough... but if you want to eat much you need to specially grind and possibly cook it. The famous white Australian explorers Burk and Wills famously learned just enough off the aboriginals trying to save their ill fated expedition form starving in the outback to know that the plant was edible... but decided to refuse further aid from the darkies, like say other foods and the way to properly treat the stuff. They learned the hard way that if you eat TOO MUCH of (pretty much any fern) and if you don't properly treat your nardoo... it causes a horrible vitamin deficiency, that kills you WITH BRAIN DAMAGE. This makes tribes that eat Nardoo strange and mysterious to outsiders because they are eating a plant that common sense tells an outsider is deadly, or that the outsider will foolishly go down the Burk and Wills path with...
Magic Nardoo - Actually this stuff totally has the best chance of any aquatic food crop of just growing in perpetual rain land WITHOUT magic modification. It is after all a fern and it CAN grow (not that great, but successfully) in actual permanent waterfalls. Where magic comes in is making OTHER ferns EDIBLE (many ferns will grow in pretty damn super ultra rainy conditions). Because if you can make the trunks of Tree ferns out of magic candy then your crop problems are looking a lot less problematic.
Sacred Lotus
Lotus fields - Actual disciplined lotus production fields come in two types, and both are sort of boring. "Shallow" lotus is grown in about 0.5m to 1m deep water, deep water lotus is grown in something like 1m+ up to about 3m. At the bottom of all that is mud where the long tuberous rhizomes of the plant lie. Those are the main edible bit. But ALL THE REST is also edible (and otherwise useful) including shoots, stems, leaves, seeds and flowers. From that are the long (often slightly spiky) stems and the big round leaves and flowers, which rise up OUT of the water in large elaborate stacks. Go Look a bit. . Of course if you want a COOL look. ANY body of water can be used to farm lotus, and in many real world countries ANY body of water IS used to farm lotus.
Lotus as Combat Terrain - Lotus is ALWAYS in the actual proper water. It NEVER has a "dry land" phase, and in fact would die if it were like that. It generally doesn't even have a "shallow" phase, it's full depth all the time. So your guys are all in deep water, possibly over their heads. When in season lotus is TALL so it's like being in a short but VERY leafy and thick forest, with scratchy stems, and all that knee/neck/deeper water, with mud underneath. Lotus LOVE nutrients, so farmers are likely to keep that water EXTRA super smelly. They may also run fish farming in there at the same time, probably giant magic mutant eels, I dunno. Lotus forms rafts out over deeper water JUST like the nardoo does, but on a MUCH large scale and with tall confusing leaves so you won't know you are in raft territory or not if you get lost. Worst the scale is so large an entire raft could break away and float along with running water or just out into a lake center.
Giant Lotus as Combat Terrain - You totally want there to be GIANT MAGIC LOTUS with like house sized leaves. That way you get complex springy multi layered platforms that may or may not be full of temporary rain water pools on the verge of spilling over into a water fall and cascading down lower teirs of leaves to the water. The general terrain fun of GIANT LOTUS is HUGE. You could have cities under or AMONG those leaves, it would be great.
Mythical Lotuses - There are TWO species of lotus in the real world. Nelumbo nucifera and Nelumbo lutea. There are... a lot of pretty hybrids, hundreds maybe more. But there USED to be eight SPECIES of lotus. They are all extinct now. The closest genetic relative remaining in the mean time is the London Plane Tree. However EVEN IN THE REAL WORLD there are NUMEROUS completely fictional sorts of lotus. From the poorly defined stuff of the "lotus eaters" to well known things like the "Black" and "Purple" lotuses of Asian mythology (which are almost always poisonous, medicinal or outright magic) or the most famous, the Blue Lotus of the Nile (almost certainly actually a mistranslated Nymphaea caerulea that possibly really DOES have some mild narcotic properties and an indescribable subtle but very very sweet, sort of addictive, scent). So OF COURSE you have the cool mythical lotus plants and such in any fictional world. Hell, I'm pretty sure there are "lotus powder" poisons in core 3E.
Magical Lotuses - GIANT MAGIC LOTUS, also, super addictive drug lotus, also, it needs to grow in the rain, also, golden lotus, purple, blue, black, and hell, a TRUE red just so the Chinese breeders of the last three millennia will FINALLY be happy.
Papyrus
It's not a food crop, you grow it for paper, fibers, and flotation devices, ask the Pharaohs, they'll give you the details. But for most purposes treat it like lotus that looks different, and which has it's root raft much higher in the water and is MUCH more likely to raft out over deeper water or form raft islands. There are lakes in Africa full of floating islands formed of lesser water weeds stuck to Papyrus super structures. These islands constantly shift and grow and break and move into an endless shifting labyrinth. Western explorers got seriously lost in this stuff, taking months to travel almost nowhere due to the confusion of the stuff. It's lots of fun.
Other Things There are countless much more boring food plants grown in water. You don't care about them, commonly they are just some funny leafy vine boggy thing that grows in the irrigation ditch that farmers just happen to also harvest to throw in their salads. Other times they are something fun like water chestnuts (both sorts) or that plant in India which you can carve almost anything out of and which gave the Pith Helmet it's name. But generally they are just an "extra" plant or somehow less interesting for role play purposes. I mean, unless you are carving elaborate Pith Armour or something...[/b]
I am only familliar with the Nuphar genus, some of which are on the endangered list. The only thing I have heard about Nymphaceae is that some species are considered an invasive pest. I have to admit, I did not even associate them with lillies until i bothered to look them up.PhoneLobster wrote: And I mean hell "not hardy"? Nympheae species are broken into two family groups. One of them is commonly CALLED "Hardy Water Lilies". Trust me. They are hardy. They are easy to grow. They are easier to grow than most common ornamental terrestrial garden plants.
Several important factors here. Precipitation, humidity, temperature and evaporation. Ferns and mosses absolutely love high humidity rainforests, varieties also thrive in temperate cloud forests and cooler low land forest climates. These characteristics are not unique. Take bromeliads for example, varieties can be found in all but sub-artic and artic climes. This does not mean you can grow pineapples in Canberra...But if I had a thousand years or so to adapt the plant, I would end up with something very much like a pineapple growing in that climate. Adding magic or technology to the mix would just mean I would get results much faster.There ARE limits to adaption. There are REASONS that Ferns, mosses and Liverworts ARE the dominant plants in situations with constant falling water. It's because they are significantly different to flowering plants in the way they handle WATER, their transpiration just functions in different ways and they BENEFIT from being really wet in ways that more "advanced" plant species just can't.
I would have to look into it, but I suspect growth would be possible in periods of extended light precipitation. It's all a matter of statistics though. Whether it would be worth the effort of planting such a crop is something I can't definitively answer without knowing more about the specific plant.You just. plain. Won't get "waterfall wheat". Not doable. The existence of wheats more resistant to rust in more humid or higher rainfall areas does NOT mean that "waterfall wheat" is possible.
You will have just significantly increased the range of plants you can grow but would still have some major issues with humidity and light and heat, which you may have worsened. See the microclimates stuff mentioned off hand in the argument with the guy who insists you could eventually just breed strains of wheat and corn that grow directly under a permanent water fall (which is what perpetual rain IS)fectin wrote:PL: if you had a roof over your plants (open walls), could they tolerate perpetual rain then?
They should be fine if you can refrain from putting them in your mouth.Maxus wrote:Note to self: Kill them.
Yet rice can pretty much do that already. But what the hell, listen to the guy that thinks mould will put an end to this kind of project, as if mould hasn't been coexisting with agriculture already for the last 10,000 years or so.PhoneLobster wrote:You will have just significantly increased the range of plants you can grow but would still have some major issues with humidity and light and heat, which you may have worsened. See the microclimates stuff mentioned off hand in the argument with the guy who insists you could eventually just breed strains of wheat and corn that grow directly under a permanent water fall (which is what perpetual rain IS)fectin wrote:PL: if you had a roof over your plants (open walls), could they tolerate perpetual rain then?
As far as actively trying: tomatoes and Radishes are the only things I've had reasonable success actively trying to grow at this residence. Corn, Lettuce, peppers and ironically enough Sunflowers are commonly grown in this area by more capable and dedicated gardeners than I am. Also occasionally cucumbers and zucchini do well here. In my experience pumpkins make impressive vines but the vines usually succumb to some type of leaf-yellowing disease before the pumpkins ripen.Lago PARANOIA wrote:The hell are you trying to grow, Josh?
Some genius decided that those were ideal decorative trees for several of our public parks. They also do pretty well in a climate with near-daily rainfall.Notation secundus: Kill the female gingko tree, too.
'Lack of fertilizer-itis'?Josh_Kablack wrote:...but the vines usually succumb to some type of leaf-yellowing disease before the pumpkins ripen.
No. Outright drowning and endless kinetic pummelling will "put and end to this project", including your rice fields. Mildew is just what you grow INSTEAD.Winnah wrote:But what the hell, listen to the guy that thinks mould will put an end to this kind of project.
By that logic, the tropics should support no plant life whatsoever. Monsoons would have pummeled them out of existance an aeon ago. Yet they somehow manage to support the most diverse concentration of flora on the planet. Wonders never cease.PhoneLobster wrote: No. Outright drowning and endless kinetic pummelling will "put and end to this project", including your rice fields. Mildew is just what you grow INSTEAD.
The Nuphar genera are lillies. As a specialist horticulturalist, i would expect you to know this.
But hey listen to the guy who decides that Nuphar is a waterlily and thinks that it is tempermental. I'm going to guess that if your main experience with "water lilies" is killing a Nuphar then you are getting your plants and information from Aquarium suppliers and killed it in a fish tank. Thats a sorta different story in general.
Kinda endangered too, being a tempermental sort of plant.Also Nuphar? Not as easy as a lily for SOME species, sort of, but not that hard either. Outside of aquarium methodology anyway. Just don't try and grow the Lutea, it's just too big. Roots like a tangled not of green car tires.
2 things off the top of head. Nitrogen deficiency and Iron deficiency. One is lack of fertilisation, the other has to do with pH. Iron sulphate will lower pH to a range where macronutrients can be easily extracted from the soil, as well as adding to the available supply. Could be a number of things though, ranging from chlorosis to various toxicities.Josh_Kablack wrote:...but the vines usually succumb to some type of leaf-yellowing disease before the pumpkins ripen
Though if you didn't have that, you'd probably have a hard time growing tomatoes, aka "nightshade, but you can totally eat the fruit without dying".Josh_Kablack wrote:As far as "just happens", our climate's propensity for growing frighteningly poisonous plants
Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I'm not going to go full-asshole, but I'm turning up the dial about 50 millikaeliks.
DSMatticus wrote:There are two things you can learn from the Gaming Den:
1) Good design practices.
2) How to be a zookeeper for hyper-intelligent shit-flinging apes.
...great idea bro.Orion wrote:Here's an idea: The eternal rain happens ONLY at the peak of a mountain in the middle of the island. They used a huge system of irrigation to distribute that water where it needs to go and vent the excess into the sea. That way they can grow water plants and not have them destroyed by exposure to direct rain.
Did you see the map I posted earlier? It's kinda big, so I sblocked it.Orion wrote:Here's an idea: The eternal rain happens ONLY at the peak of a mountain in the middle of the island. They used a huge system of irrigation to distribute that water where it needs to go and vent the excess into the sea. That way they can grow water plants and not have them destroyed by exposure to direct rain.
Avoraciopoctules wrote:Alright, I've done some tinkering around in GIMP and I've got the beginnings of a map done. This seems like a more moderate take on the "Land of Eternal Rain". Still room for the adaptations discussed in the thread, but there could be some conventional fields
You don't really understand the difference between "Some" and "All" do you?Winnah wrote:By that logic, the tropics should support no plant life whatsoever.
There's a female gingko outside of work. There's three male gingkos nearby. The tree is a perpetual state of getting gangbanged and produces copious amounts of fruit, which falls onto the sidewalk and begins rotting within two or so hours (or so it seems) and smells filthy.Josh_Kablack wrote:Some genius decided that those were ideal decorative trees for several of our public parks. They also do pretty well in a climate with near-daily rainfall.Notation secundus: Kill the female gingko tree, too.
Yeah, I reckoned algaculture would be the way to go. Closed pool setups would be more resistant to contamination, important given the potential in a climate like this, and shit like chorella and spirulina are complete proteins. I suppose it does defeat the purpose of the thought exercise to not actively use the rainfall, instead directing it to irrigation and paddle wheels to agitate the algae pools. But it's been well illustrated here that an area under perpetual rainfall is going to have to build growhouses. That's why I like the idea above of rainfall only being constant at the high point of the island. Who doesn't like the image of the castle atop a mountain with a perpetual rain cloud letting out ominous peals of thunder?Vebyast wrote:How about growing straight algae? I don't know of any kelp variations that grow in freshwater, but it doesn't really stretch the imagination, and there are plenty of strains (kombu) that are used for food.
