Juvel tree

The juvel tree (pronounced /ˈʤuːvɪltri/) is a sessile organism native to the planet Charse. Despite their immobility, juvel trees are noetic beings. Though their main bodies are incapable of movement on their own, juvel trees can send out mobile, temporary parts of themselves, called strikes, to perform actions they need done.

Description

Despite its very different anatomy and completely independent evolution, the juvel tree bears a fairly strong superficial resemblance to a Terran tree. Its wrinkled, brown surface looks from a distance like a tree's bark, though the resemblance fails at closer inspection; it has a more uniform, almost rubbery texture, and has a network of veins visible near the surface. The juvel tree's foliage is rather more leathery than a typical Terran tree's leaf, and more firmly attached to the stem. It also varies in color; while some juvels do indeed have green "leaves", others tend more toward gray or bluish. The most unusual feature of the juvel tree, however, is the pods that hang down from its branches, in some cases reaching to the ground. These large pods, sometimes called juvel fruit, serve as containers and incubators for the juvel trees' strikes. The pods' color varies by tree; many juvel trees have fruit the same brown as their branches, while others may bear fruit in several bright colors.

The strikes, which themselves resemble little more than animate collections of branches, grow within the juvel fruit, taking between twenty and thirty days to fully mature. On its own, a strike scuttles on three or more branchlike legs, with another few limbs in use as manipulating members. A strike's sensory organs are set into its form and hidden beneath part of its surface; to someone who doesn't know exactly what to look for, a strike looks eyeless and earless, though in fact it has quite adequate vision and hearing.

Juvel trees rarely exceed more than six or seven meters in height, and even that is unusual; most mature trees attain only about five meters or so. Old juvel trees, rather than growing taller, tend to grow outward, dropping subsidiary trunks and eventually budding into multiple individuals.

Anatomy

The juvel tree's interior is permeated by vessels carrying fluids and nutrients between parts of the florum, analogous to the xylem and phloem of many Terran plants. Like these plants, the juvel trees has no central heart; the circulatory system is distributed through all these vessels. Unlike most Terran plants, however, the juvel tree's xylem and phloem are arranged in radial lots, rather than the phloem being concentrated near the surface. Most of the juvel tree's vessels are too small to see with the naked eye, though they do increase in diameter as they near the tree's center, with some of the central vessels of an old tree reaching a few millimeters in diameter.

The juvel tree does have the ability to move its branches slowly through hydrostatic pressure, but is mostly incapable of fine or rapid movement, and cannot move its trunk at all. Aside from the strikes, the only parts that move with any noticeable speed are the magula on the tree's roots, the openings to swollen cavities of varying sizes. Bearing a superficial resemblance to lipped mouths, the magula are usually kept closed, opening only to admit food. Within the cavities beyond, called digestive sinuses, the food is dissolved and absorbed into the surrounding tissues, whence phloem vessels terminating at the sinuses carry the nutrients to the rest of the tree's body.

The juvel tree's nervous system is similarly decentralized, with nerves (or cells functionally equivalent to them) growing interlaced throughout its internal structure, rather than forming one central brain. In contrast to the circulatory vessels, which mostly follow the trunk and branches longitudinally, the nerves tend to be oriented in lateral circles, though with many connections between them, as well as to the sensory organs, which, like those of the strikes, are inconspicuous but effective. The juvel tree's mental processes are spread throughout its nervous structure in such a way that damage to one small part of its body seldom results in the losses of any particular memories or mental functions. The spread-out nature of its nervous system, however, does mean that the tree's reactions are fairly slow; since the tree itself (in contrast to its strikes) is capable of little direct action anyway, this rarely matters in practice. In any case, the tree's neural network is complex enough to give the tree considerable intelligence; if not a quick thinker, the juvel tree can be a deep one.

Strikes

At any given time, a particular juvel tree is likely to have anywhere between two and six strikes active, with a similar amount in reserve in juvel fruit—and about the same number again of immature fruit containing embryonic strikes not yet ready to separate from thet tree. The strikes generally serve as the "hands" of the tree, performing the physical activities the main trunk is not able to do, and perhaps going far from the main tree to do so. Lacking any sort of digestive system and subsisting only on nutrient stores inside, however, strikes cannot survive long away from the parent tree before they have to return, reattach to its branches, and reseal themselves in its fruit.

The strike has a smaller but more concentrated imitation of the main tree's neural pattern, which is specifically kept in conformance with that of the tree it sprang from, giving the strike the tree's basic memories and personality, though perhaps not in quite so much depth. Indeed, both the juvel tree and the strike consider the strike not to be a separate entity, but to be just an appendage of the tree, albeit an appendage not kept in physical contact with the main body. (If true, this would arguably make the juvel tree a pleote, though many etorists disagree with this categorization on certain technical grounds.) The juvel tree has no direct telepathic communication with the strike while the two are separated, and is not directly aware of its activities. When the strike rejoins the main tree, however, the tree then gains the strike's memories, as well as giving the strike any new memories it has formed in the meantime. The strike's nutrient store is also replenished, readying the strike for another prolonged separation from the tree. The memory synchronization is relatively rapid, taking only a matter of minutes; the renutrition is much slower, and may take more than a day.

Since the strike is considered just a part of the juvel tree, the juvel tree does not consider the destruction of a strike to be death, per se, nor the intentional destruction of a strike to be murder. It is, nonetheless, a serious matter, if not quite so bad as death at least comparable to maiming. While the juvel tree physically loses nothing irreplaceable and can easily grow another strike, it does lose the memories and experience the strike had accumulated before rejoining the tree, so the death of a strike in a way amounts to a sort of mental damage.

Diet and Behavior

Although juvel trees are genuinely photosynthetic, they do not get enough energy that way to furnish all their needs. Similarly, they may get some chemicals from the air and soil, but not enough to sustain them unsupplemented. Rather, the majority of the tree's energy and nutriment comes from the food it digests in its alimentary sinuses. The trees' food is brought by the strikes, which indeed seems to be one of their main purposes. Strikes venture away from their associated trees to gather digestible organic matter that they bring back and feed through the trees' magula. The food they bring may consist of scavenged vegetable matter, but may also include tissue from fauna, including whole corpses. Like most other noetic species, many juvel trees have developed more refined culinary tastes, and their strikes prepare their food in various ways before feeding it through the magula.

Naturally, like other noetic races, many juvel trees now live in ways very different from their uncivilized ancestors. While it seems that the ancestral trees were permanently fixed in place, some juvel trees now may use their strikes to dig up their parent bodies and "replant" them in different locations, giving them a limited sort of mobility. It's not uncommon for juvel trees to live indoors, away from sunlight, or to be "planted" in mobile, motorized pots driven by their strikes, and thus escape their forefathers' immotility.

Reproduction

Aside from gathering food, another main function of the strikes is to reproduce. (While some venerable juvel trees may also reproduce by budding, this is not the organism's primary form of reproduction.) Two strikes from different trees may place their bodies into close contact, and over a period of days they grow together and a seed forms within them, combining the genetic material from both parents, from which a new juvel tree will grow. The strikes die, having given their nutrient stores to the new tree, though this is one cause of strike death that most juvel trees consider unexceptionable.

While juvel saplings rely more on photosynthesis than do adult trees, they still require some supplement to what they can get that way. Until it grows strikes of its own, the young juvel tree is largely nurtured by its parents, or by other helpers, who bring it food. After about a year, the young juvel tree grows small juvel fruit of its own, from which emerge tiny strikes that are able to start to forage for their trunk.