The Gossamer Oak is one of two plant species uniquely native to the
Goldenweed Wastes, the other being the
Goldenweed that gives the region its name and is responsible for the lack of diversity in the region. The violent grasping of the Goldenweed is too much for most species, even tearing apart other plants as seedlings before they can grow to sufficient size to resist it. However, due to a magical adaptation that most believe happened concurrently with the one that caused Goldenweed to be so dangerous, the Gossamer Oak survives through a remarkable property: flight.
Life Cycle
All parts of a gossamer oak have a unique relationship with gravity: instead of falling, the trees, dead or alive, will slowly drift downward or upward to a specific height. The elevation an object crafted of this material is proportional to the mass of the object - a heavier object, such as a century old Gossamer Oak tree or the oaken cores found in a
Dirigible will float extremely high off the ground if left untethered.
Gossamer Oaks allow their seedlings to grow to a couple of feet high before they are cast aside like autumn leaves. The saplings then descend to a mere 15 feet above the surface, barely out of reach of the tallest of the Goldenweed. As the tree grows, it ascends, until it reaches about 10 years of age. When this happens, its root system, already a well developed lattice that maximizes the harvest of morning dew, begins to grow rapidly, reaching downwards all the way to the surface. In the next windstorm, the Goldenweed detects the wind blown roots and grabs hold, firmly anchoring the tree to the surface. The roots draw moisture out of the weeds wrapped around them, weakening their hold to a tolerable level while also preventing the plant from eventually releasing them. This eventually kills the Goldenweed, which will eventually be uprooted by its grasp on the floating tree, but by that point new roots will have grown and formed their own tethers to the surface.
Once this tether to the ground is firmly established, a Gossamer Oak begins to grow quickly (by the standards of natural tree growth), and will start to produce small flowers, which are fertilized by windborne pollen from nearby trees, and produces its own seedlings, starting the cycle over again. Gossamer Oaks have an extremely variable lifespan, but they tend to slow their growth with age. Eventually, all Gossamer Oaks reach a point where their root systems kill the weeds tethering them to the surface faster than they can expand and be ensnared by new weeds. When the tether finally fails, a Gossamer Oak floats upwards quite quickly, suddenly freed to float freely. Most of these trees have reached so great a size that they float up and out of sight. Many among the
Welkin Gnomes wonder what the ultimate fate of these trees is, but few return from experiments to determine this alive, and those that do are rarely capable of providing clear answers.
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