Drybriar

The drybriar is a briar plant native to the magical wastes with purple stems and thorns, and bright pink flowers. These flowers have a tangy and bitter taste that turns sweet when cooked. The sophan, native to the region, like to dive down and pick these flowers as they fly, while the other sapient species living in the wastes have begun to domesticate the plant for its flowers.

Anatomy

Drybriar grows with thick, purple stems with thorns poking outwards on all sides. The stem is covered in small hair-like extrusions that can get caught in unprotected skin and cause pain and irritation. The thorns themselves are sharp enough to break skin and cause bleeding in all but the toughest skins. Its leaves are long, pointed, and jagged, and point directly outwards from the plant's stem. The plant is an Amythomite, much like the majority of the life within the magical wastes. They are energophobic, completely resistant and insensitive to magic and magical influence. As such, it is able to withstand the high levels of magical energy within its native habitat.
The plant gets its nutrients not directly through the soil of the wastes - rather, it roots in ratweed plants that line the wastes' floor, digging pointed roots into the branches of the ratweed and hijaking the already-converted nutrients from their host plant. Drybriar shares this behaviour with many other plant species of the magical wastes, as ratweed is one of very few able to take the scattered and toxic materials in the soil and turn them into useable nutrients.

Geographic Distribution

• Magical Wastes

Drybriar Cuisine

While the flower is the most readily edible part of the drybriar plant, with proper preparation, it is possible to consume the stems as well. When preparing drybriar stems, it is very important to remove the entire outside of the stem, to ensure that none of the plant's hairs remain to get suck on the inside of one's throat. If this does happen, it is incredibly painful. The inside of the stem tastes somewhat sweet, with the slightest hint of a metallic flavour.