Cloud Flowers
Cloud Flowers are a genera of sky plants native to the planet Collena. They are utterly tiny in size and are known to spend their lives in the skies thousands of meters above the ground. While they look wonderfully strange and hardly plant-like at first glance, all the necessary parts for a flowering plant to function are there. Normally unnoticeable to everyone, every few decades they bloom in such large numbers that they create colorful but deadly clouds in the sky and create sights unlike anything seen across all of the Cairn Sector of the galaxy. Their uses are almost none and they are highly regulated so interplanetary contamination doesn't accidentally occur, but the colorful clouds they make in the skies are pretty to look at.
Etymology and Word Origin
Nimbi is Latin for Storm Clouds. These plants are often called Storm Flowers because they often fall out of the sky when it rains. After being dried out by the sun, many were light enough to be picked up by a gust of wind or the summer heat and be flung back into the sky.
Yoraya is Fevarik for Sky Child. In ancient times, Fevarik myths told that the various colored clouds were children of the various gods. There was a separate name for each color of cloud that appeared in the sky. They often came to Collena and stayed there under the watchful eyes of Vala (the sun) and Sevi (the moon). After they went back to their parents, their creations would fall to the land in the form of tiny flowers.
Classification
Kingdom: PlantaePhylum: Angiosperms
Class: Eucidots
Order: Asterales
Genera: Nimbi
Common names:
Cloud Flowers (common)
Storm Flowers (common)
Yoraya (Fevarik)
Geographic distribution
Description
Cloud Flowers are small, very small. The largest specimens ever found are about 5cm across. The smallest specimens are just over a tenth of a milimeter and their structures are such a small size that they challenge known science when it comes to multicellular plant life because while there are flowers that small on other worlds, cloud flowers also produce an edible berry as well as multiple seeds that are so small that single-cell algae are larger. They have complete root structures adapted for life in the skies. All cloud flowers also have both male and female reproductive organs.
Larger specimens still look somewhat like flowers. They have four to eight solid petals, and have distinguishable pistils, leaves, and stamen. The smaller cloud flowers have two or four transparent 'petal cases' that are actually two flower petals fused together. Inside these cases are a single leaf that produces all the plant's food through regular photosynthesis. The chamber is filled with either hydrogen or helium. The leaf doesn't actually breath here, but is instead connected to the outside through tiny tubes so it can take in carbon dioxide and convert it to oxygen.
Size comparison between a human hand, and several species of Cloud Flowers. Also shown is the undisputed smallest flower in the Galaxy, a rather plain Earth plant designated as Wolffia Globosa, also known as duckweed.
Fairy Flower
Many sky plants will float and follow the flow predictably with the air currents. Fairy Flowers often get caught in the wind and flail around in unpredictable patterns, which attracts flying animals, thinking it is a bug of some kind, which helps spread the plant's seeds more than other cloud flowers. They are able to do this because their seeds often grow asymmetrically, with two seeds on one side of the flower, and one or none on the other.
The flower's core is quite bitter and is often dried and uses as a seasoning. If it isn't eaten, it is often crushed and used as a deep red dye for clothing and paints.
On each side of the plant are multiple long filaments that act as the plants roots. These roots catch water vapor in the air and also assist with flying, but quickly become overwhelmed if it becomes soaked with water. On smaller species, the stamen have fused with the roots and also produce the plant's pollen. Regardless of species, pollen is spread exclusively by the wind.
Depending on species, the fruits are grown either between the flower petals, or they migrate to the edges of the petal cases and develop there. The long filaments at the ends of the seeds assist with floating in the air. The seeds will fall off after the entire plant dies and be carried away by the wind. This usually occurs two to four weeks after they start growing.
At the center of the flower is what can best be described as the plant core. It is the primary structure holding the entire plant together and performs secondary functions while growing. On larger specimens the plant core acts as the receptacle or stem, though it isn't attached to anything other than the flower and the roots. On smaller specimens, the pistil never emerges and stays inside the plant core, which becomes the entire female part of the plant. Small holes are scattered all around the outside that accept pollen. The plant core also acts as a secondary or accessory fruit, and the flavor can be wildly different depending on species.
The color of the plant will also vary between species. One of the more common species is shown on this page, called the Fairy Flower (N. Spiritus). It has transparent violet petals and a crimson core at its center. Other species can be nearly any color flower and fruit. The roots and seeds are almost always the same color as the flower, or silvery grey, or a combination of the two. This is so flying animals can't distinguish them against the sky.
Life cycle
Upon fertilization, the entire ovule will migrate away from the pistil, through modified plant veins. In larger specimens it will settle between the flower petals and develop into a fruit there to protect the seed. In smaller specimens, it will migrate as far from the plant core as possible, to the outer edges of the leaf.
After the fruit matures and breaks away from its parent plant, it will not immediately grow. It will float around the air for months or even years. The times that cloud flowers grow varies by species and is usually on specific days of the year, but generally is in late winter to early spring. When this time comes the seed will sprout roots and enlarge, eventually blooming. From here smaller species will fuse their petals together to make an airtight case and larger species will just grow larger petals to catch more air.
Within just a few days the plant will start producing pollen in large quantities, then die within a few more weeks. The total time they are alive after sprouting is less than two months. All of this happens a kilometer in the air above most of the planet where people will never even notice they exist, unless a super bloom is happening, where all the seeds sprout at once, growing trillions of flowers at the same time. When this happens, they sometimes violate their own life cycle and seeds continuously sprout throughout the year, creating even more flowers.
Goblin Flower
One of the more notoriously unpredictable species of Cloud Flowers. Despite decades of research, scientists have never been able to properly time the plant's super blooms (except once). This species often chokes the skies of all other life until the bloom ends.
Research and uses
Cloud flowers are widely researched on Collena and some medical breakthroughs can be attributed to it. Regalti scientists have been able to isolate several anti-inflammatory drugs out of its fruit, which does explain why it is sometimes referenced in old medical literature as a painkiller in large enough quantities. The fruit is also rich in antioxidants and are quite healthy for you. The entire plant of some species are actually edible.
Regalti have been known to make a bitter wine out of it, though it is not a particularly common thing they do. The plant cores are often crushed into a juice and placed into barrels made of Veilwood, left to ferment for a year or more, then filled into glass bottles where it could be decades before they are finally opened.
Due to the bold color of the plant core, it has been used as a dye in the past. Examples of clothing have been found dating back thousands of years of Regalti history and traces of hundreds of different species of the flower have been found. The clothing color indicates when cloud flower super blooms occur, and have assisted in tracking when they happened.
Despite having these uses, Regalti have high levels of access to the flowers only when super blooms happen, otherwise there are too few of them and they are too dispersed in the air to gather in any meaningful quantities. Attempts have been made to grow them in space, but the last attempt known as the 'Goblin incident' stopped Regalti from trying to grow them in space forever. They now take advantage of them only when naturally occuring super blooms occur, otherwise, cloud flowers play no part in modern Regalti culture.
Vusinor Research Log
VMN 350
Not even close to the smallest flowers I have researched. Not Even Close! Okay, they are the smallest by weight, and at least they still look like flowers instead of tiny green dots. By physical size however, planet Earth in the Pleiades Sector, wins this competition, easily. These Regalti are always thinking they have the most wonderfully weird stuff in the galaxy! The universe is much larger than their planet, or the Cairn Sector for that matter!
I will give them this though. These things taste wonderful, especially the bitter ones! They're so small, but the taste hits me hard the moment it touches my tongue! It's a shame they are banned for export.....I need to think of an excuse to come back to Collena in the future.
...I miss Earth...but that planet is even more off limits than cloud flowers are.
-Zilda Marn, Class B Research Agent
The Goblin Incident
The Goblin incident was an attempt by a corporation to grow cloud flowers in mass quantities for commercial production. It did not end well.
About three decades after the Exodus, the Violet Sky Corporation experimented with flowers on a company owned space colony, called the Sky Cradle and was a dedicated research facility for low gravity plant applications. Their cloud flower of choice was the largest known specimen, the 'Goblin Flower'. They started cross breeding them in an attempt to trigger a super bloom to better understand how they occur, which did end up happening.
Unfortunately, their de-contamination procedures weren't being properly followed. A researcher went home one day, unaware he had several seeds hitching a ride on his coat that did not go through the UV filter. Within a few days, the colony's air filtration systems were clogged with pollen and the flowers were growing literally everywhere. Attempts to beat back the flowers ended in several failures.
The company board decided that the best answer to this situation would be to evacuate the colony, but their decision came just a little too late. 13 people in the colony died of asphyxiation and 20 others had permanently damaged lungs. The colony was sent straight into the star Fevaultar and no further attempts were made to purposefully trigger a super bloom from cloud flowers.
Arthropod Extinction
Often visitors to Planet Collena might wonder, where are all the arthropods? There are very few spiders, beetles, ants, or any of a million other species on land. There are aquatic arthropods, but they are restricted to the deep oceans generally. Instead there are a million species of several unrelated phyla of creatures, from flying mollusks to miniscule tetrapods, land dwelling Jellyfish, even many plants, that fill the same ecological niches. Even tiny mites got replaced by equally tiny snails. Many visiting scientists are baffled by the lack of arthropods, but the solution to the problem is actually quite simple.
Many species of cloud flowers produce a chemical called "chitinases" and this chemical is everywhere in the air during a superbloom. For what scientists know, has occured in regular cycles for close to two hundred million years. This chemical degrades chitin, which is the primary material that makes up the exoskeleton of arthropods as well as the cell walls of many species of fungi.
Most other groups of life that depended on chitin evolved to compensate, fungi included, but not arthropods. Because of this, 99% of land-dwelling arthropods went extinct around two hundred million years ago and never recovered. Whenever a new species tries to crawl out of the oceans, their exoskeleton is weakened within a few days, where just about any passing animal gets a free, tasty snack.
Super Blooms
While it varies by species, cloud flowers will bloom in extremely large numbers every few decades, but depending on species, it could be centuries or millennia between these 'super blooms'. The exact mechanism for how and why these occur are not known. Using things like the dates of cloud flower wines and older objects like ancient Regalti clothing, scientists have learned to track and predict when these super blooms occur with some success but often they still happen without warning.
Cloud flower blooms can be dangerous and even deadly for all ecosystems. The flowers multiply so much they completely fill the sky, suffocating flying animals and causing many of them to fall from the sky. The pollen and dead flowers from these plants will eventually fall and settle on land, but until then, they can stay in the air for weeks, causing allergies and choking animals and people. It isn't that dangerous for Regalti, or animals that are large enough that the pollen doesn't do anything to them...unless they happen to have an allergy, in which case the next few months are a hellish experience for them.
While sometimes deadly, cloud flower blooms do look pretty.
So much pollen can fall that it will turn the surface of most objects a reddish color. The pollen will also settle on water in large quantities, forming a thick sludge that will stay in place for months until it rains enough to wash away. Surface feeding fish risk suffocation. Water bugs are unable to enter and exit water and mass deaths occur as a result.
Luckily, the ecosystems of the planet has developed ways to deal with super blooms. These blooms correlate with super swarms of insects that only eat specific species of cloud flowers, mitigating the effect (but also creating massive clouds of bugs instead for weeks at a time). Most animals can tolerate the pollen and even eat it.
Regulation
Due to the Goblin Incident, there is fear of what may happen if cloud flowers ever get out in the ecosystems of other worlds. As far as the Regalti are concerned, their two planets, Collena and Sephar, have always had cloud flowers, but the ecosystems of these two worlds are also adapted to deal with them. The other habitable planet in their system, Senon, doesn't have an atmosphere with the right composition to support cloud flowers.
The Vusinor and Maorian are scared to death of what might happen if seeds from these plants ever make their way to their worlds, as are the Regalti space colonies. Because of this, most goods and cargo are generally shot with a high dose of UV radiation before they leave Collena, which can kill the flower and sterilize the seeds. Live goods are carefully inspected to ensure there are no seeds or flowers on them.
This is a very nice article. I love the idea of a cloud of flowers just growing in the sky and turning deadly once in a while XD And you've made really nice illustrations too! They really enhance the article and help illustrate what you are saying. So when the fruit is always there even when the ovaries are not fecundated, contrary to normal fruits who are only created after fecundation? And once the ovaries are fecundated, the genetic material migrates to the extremities of the flower so that the seeds can be formed there? " The fruit itself is so boldly colored to aid in the death of the plant protect the seeds from being eaten." This sentence doesn't make any sense to me. Do you mean that the bold colour is a warning that anyone eating it will die and so they protect the plants? Is the fruit toxic or not? Also, you have blooming period. Does this just mean that the plants multiply a lot during that period? Because they can't lose their petals during other times or they wouldn't be able to float. Love that quote from the researcher XD In the use you have for them you keep saying they need to be harvested in large enough quantity. Can people do that at all time of the year or do they wait for the big blooming season? Can they ever get big enough quantity of the flowers, or are the products made for it only prestige items reserved for the elite?
Thanks for the feedback! I'm going to expand on the article a little more with a life-cycle section and clarify wording, especially since I now have slightly more than an afternoon of research and memories of high school science class (I have two afternoons of research!) To address your questions right now.... 1. The part of the flower that I labeled as a seed should actually be an achene (dry fruit, like dandelion or strawberry fruit), and the part I labeled a fruit should be an accessory fruit (or maybe isn't even a fruit at all, just the body or nucleus of the plant?) And yes, the idea is that the genetic material migrates away to develop a seed at the extremities of the flower, and once the seed breaks away, it grows that colored fleshy covering that I mislabeled as a fruit. 2. I'm gonna word that better.... The 'fruit' is colored that way to attract small flying animals to it instead of the seeds at the ends of the petals. They have a very short lifespan anyways so once the seeds are developed enough the plant no longer cares for its own survival. 3. Another thing I need to word better and expand. Cloud flowers are annual plants that bloom, bear seeds, and die, all within a several month time span, and they only do it at certain times of the year. They normally bloom in small numbers. The super blooms only happen under special conditions and are years/decades/millennia apart from each other depending on species. 4. You need a large enough quantity because they are so small and dispersed in the air that most people don't even notice they exist at all. The other issue is that they spend their entire lives miles in the sky, except for when the super blooms happen every few decades, then just about everyone has access to them. Otherwise products made from them are expensive.