Coppertrace Vines
Metallurgic botany
Eat 'em if they fail, dig 'em if they don't.These strange vines flourish in an environment rich with certain minerals; the height of the plant and the colour of the resulting fruit in particular depend on one specific element: copper. When copper is found in soil at higher percentages than usual, the plant grows taller and the fruit takes on a specific colour -- making Coppertrace Vines exceptionally handy plants for mining and surveying companies looking to begin extracting more copper from the ground.
Roots into the deep
Coppertrace Vines are a fruiting vine that grows in small bundles of snaking vines that pile up on the ground unless given a medium to crawl up instead; they flower in the late spring, turning into small juicy fruits by roughly mid summer. The fruits are generally red, and taste sweet, not unlike a variety of small tomatoes -- however when there is excess copper in the plant's nutrient uptake, the fruits ripen into a bronze-ish colour that gradually turns a greenish purple by the time they're fully ripe. These copper-rich fruits become bitter, metallic, overly full of seeds and generally unpleasant to eat.
However despite the less appetizing fruits that come from an having an excess of the mineral, these vines seem to search out copper by sending roots incredibly deep into the ground, spreading far from the trunk of the plant.
In general, copper helps the enzymatic activity in most plants, and is used as part of seed production; Coppertrace Vines instead seem to be an exceptional case to this rule, benefiting far more than the average plant when subjected to large amounts of copper nutrients. Because of this biological benefit, the vines have been found growing roots tens of meters deep into the ground, searching for rich deposits of copper beneath the surface.
An excess of other micro-nutrients will result in other variations of the fruit, too -- for example too much Zinc and the fruit will grow enormous, take on a silvery sheen, and have an incredibly mushy texture. It also essentially tastes like nothing, so I can't recommend focusing on zinc.Patronsclicktaphere for bonus info
The Vinespread Surveying Technique
When an open pit copper mine runs dry, or the company is searching for a new location to begin a fresh dig, a team of surveyors is generally sent to evaluate the nearby landscape to assess the best location for a new pit. Often this is done slowly and methodically -- small samples about 1m deep are taken every so often in a grid like pattern, tested for copper, then recorded on a gridded map.Coppertracing
What some resourceful and inventive surveyors have taken to doing instead is spreading a dense, packed layer of Coppertrace seeds across a large swathe of nearby landscape in the early days of a mining operation. Much of the seed will fail, as because agriculture is not the main reason for being there, the mining company will effectively ignore the seedling crops -- however a significant enough portion of them will take, growing into properly fruiting vines across the ground. With enough vines growing near copper deposits, they can essentially replace the need for manually taking samples; just observing the field of fruiting vines will generally show which areas are rich in the desired mineral, and which are not.If they show copper, then that's great! We know where to put our next pit. Dig em up and keep the seeds for the next plot. If not? Well, on the downtime some of the workers like to go out and pick 'em once the fruit ripens. Makes for a nice little bonus, some fresh food to take home -- and if there's enough, we can even sell them for a little bit of extra profit on top.
I love this idea soooo much. I wonder what they would taste like if the soil held too much gold. :D
Explore Etrea
Thank you Emy! There's a lot of fun things to think about for a plant like this :D