Sketches – Desert Spike

This plant doesn’t really have a hard location where it exists in my universe yet, but it’s something that I’ll be saving for when I find a good locale and where it makes sense. The idea where this plant came from was looking at some mimosa pudica plants (the sensitive ones that have leaves that fold up when touched) and wondering how else that could be used. So I crossed the idea with a palm tree, where during moist or rainy weather, the stalks “bloom” open and allow rainwater to be caught or mist to condense into the pockets so the plant can get the moisture it needs to survive.

Another one of my plant sketch experiments. This one I’m a lot happier with, even though it’s a much simpler design, mainly because this is something actually different compared to most modern known plant life. I don’t really have a scale idea for this one, but I always envisioned it to be about the size of a small tree, between three and six or so meters tall. It would probably have a broader root structure like a cactus than a more vertical root structure (searching for latent underground water), but that’s something that would also change depending on where it ended up being.

One other possibility would have it be part of an otherwise arid island or other region that had enough elevation for low clouds/high fog-banks to pass by and it would use that to absorbs as much moisture as possible (probably by having additional hairs inside the “petals”).