Umbraroot

Artwork

Weight:
10,000lbs

The **Umbraroot** (*Umbrus ascensiglobus*) is an original species created and designed by TheAgent41. The Umbraroot inhabits the *The Hole* universe, an original universe created by TheAgent41.

## Appearance and Anatomy

The umbraroot is a large globe-producing floravite that can be found largely in shrubland environments. Like all floravites, the umbraroot appears to be a plant but is actually more accurately described as a "plantimal", having both plant and animal characteristics. Like a plant, it is rooted in one spot and can produce its own food, but like an animal, it has both a circulatory system and nervous system. Including its globe, the umbraroot stands approximately 16 feet in height and can weigh upwards of five tons.

The umbraroot, like other members of its order, deposits the waste products left behind after thermosynthesis in a large spherical globe. A rough analogy can be made between a floravite globe and a berry or nut produced by any number of Earth plants. When the globe becomes too full, a small orifice on its underside opens and allows the juice to drain out, providing nutrition for any hungry carnevites underneath. The members of the umbraroot's suborder have developed hard glass-like shells surrounding their globes to prevent them from being punctured.

The umbraroot's most distinguishing feature is the trio of trunks that support its enormous orb. While it may appear to be three separate trees, all three trunks are genetically the same organism and are connected by their roots. It is thought that this adaptation evolved to maximize the total number of heat-absorbing lobes without crowding a single trunk with them and thereby diminishing the effectiveness of each individual lobe. Each trunk has its own heart to maximize circulation efficiency, as one heart would likely be overworked.

## Ecology

### Behavior and Intelligence

Umbraroots, like all species in the subphylum Aeteritruncata, are sessile and spend their entire lives rooted to the ground, drawing extra nutrients from the minerals below to supplement their thermosynthetic diet. Because their nervous system is so simple, they are incapable of conscious actions and merely react to external stimuli.

### Diet

Umbraroots are autotrophic, meaning they can produce their own food. They do this through thermosynthesis, a metabolic process in which heat from the sun above is absorbed by the numerous lobes poking from their trunks and converted into nutrients. This is a similar process to photosynthesis used by Earth plants, and in fact, there are a few species in the phylum Solorephyte that do engage in photosynthesis rather than thermosynthesis.

### Reproduction

The umbraroot lives in an environment with sparsely distributed carnevite population, which means that it can't rely solely on them to disperse its reproductive pods in their fecal matter. To get around this, the umbraroot has adapted a unique strategy. Its pods are contained mainly in its lobes. When an umbraroot is ready to spread its seed, it redirects the flow of blood toward the base of its lobes while closing off the veins to the lobes themselves. By building up sufficient pressure, it can essentially launch the lobes into the air where they will be carried to new locations via the wind. When a lobe finally lands on the ground, the pod inside its base will dig into the ground via small cilia and begin spreading roots and constructing its three trunks. While the umbraroot is waiting for its lobes to grow back (a process that can take three or four Earth days), it will rely on energy drawn from the rocks below for survival.

## Trivia

* The scientific name *Umbrus ascensiglobus* loosely translates from Latin as "ascending globe of shadow".

## Gallery

Artwork