Bindweed is, according to many farmers, the worst weed. Once considered to be a plant “under control,” bindweed has found no such controls in these post-apocalyptic times. Unfortunately, few are clever or patient enough to rediscover the ways and means of controlling this highly invasive entity.
The vine grows extraordinarily fast, and in good conditions it can grow one “complete” plant in just under 2 hours. Mutants and synthetics with superior hearing sometimes say they can hear it growing, though this is mostly a matter of folklore.
Bindweed’s modus operandi is simple. It twines and coils around all the available plants in the area, encircling a plant from the ground up in a counterclockwise manner. Once it reaches the top of a plant, the bindweed pulls the plant down, and then promptly grows over it. Whole fields of agriculture can be decimated in a week by bindweed as the invasive flora literally “binds” the crops into a thick mat against the ground.
Getting rid of bindweed is practically an exercise in futility. It gets caught up in the engines of machinery, and also binds up any harvesting or threshing material. Plus, bindweed’s root system is brittle, and breaks easily; each broken root piece is capable of growing a whole new bindweed plant. Trying to remove bindweed by force only doubles or triples the amount of the invasive weed one had in the first place.
Bindweed is rare in
Taebur, but when it shows up, it can be devastating. The vine can grow out of control within a day and ruin a town’s crops. Since arable land viable for planting is scarce, this severely diminishes the potential for food production. The victimized town will then have to rely on other communities for crop production, which can be costly.
Fire and frost weapons can harm bindweed, but this usually ends up with three-quarters of the crops sustaining irrevocable damage, as well. Some farmers with backgrounds in chemistry have concocted homemade herbicides, but while these sprays keep the crops alive, sometimes they end up killing the farmers, so expensive robots may be required to do the job of spreading the herbicide.
Grab Grass
A relative of bindweed, grab grass is somewhat more common in Taebur, particularly in the more fertile lands near the
White River. Grab grass sets its roots in fields of long grasses, quickly replacing the original grass while looking virtually identical to it. Unlike bindweed, grab grass isn't after other plants. It actively attacks animal life (including humans and mutants). It grabs hold of legs, arms, and other appendages within reach (and grab grass can be as tall as 6 to 8 feet), and pulls the animal to the ground and smothers it. It then slowly dissolves the animal and absorbs it as a food source.
Once grab grass is established in an area, local fauna will soon learn to avoid the area, which means the grab grass generally manage to maintain a permanent presence. However, one Medium creature can sustain a 1-acre patch of grab grass for several weeks, so it takes time to rid an area grab grass infestation--especially since it only takes a couple birds or other animals wandering in from farther away to provide some sustenance.
Swampweed
Swampweed is a distant relative of bindweed, but grows only in the wetlands and swamps of the world, which are exceedingly rare in
Taebur. However, there are a couple locations along the
White River that can sometimes see swampweed. Like bindweed, swampweed exists to take over other plants in an invasive manner and build itself a monoculture over a multiculture, meaning it becomes the single dominant species of flora in a given area. Swampweed is not as directly harmful as its cruel cousin, but in marshy areas it still is cause for grave concern. Mechanical choppers or harvesters (or even clouds of nanounit “whizzers,” meant to dice through plants in an extraordinarily short amount of time) only increase the amount of swampweed, as every fragment of every leaf grows a whole new swampweed plant. Swampweed also makes movement through swamps beyond difficult. Whereas bindweed is easy to walk over, swampweed is a soupy mesh that clogs machines, wraps around tires, and even binds up feet if one isn’t careful. Also, any creature of size Small or less gains a +4 circumstance bonus on Hide checks when attempting to remain unseen in the morass of wet weeds. This stacks with the standard size bonus for Small or smaller creatures.
