Plantkissers

Plantkissers replaced their ancestor within Orpington. These little stars have suction cup-like mouths filled with rasping teeth derived from those that already surrounded their mouths. Unlike their ancestor, which chews off bits of flora to eat, Plantkissers chew a single hole and proceed to drink the flora’s sap, allowing them to feed from the same plant for an extended period of time. This reduces the amount of time they spend wandering between meals where they are exposed to predators such as Scorpioworts. They often stay attached for a long time, and as such their stomach extends further through their bodies. They effectively have a stomach in each arm, which they swap between clockwise as they consume more sap so that fresh and partially-digested sap does not mix. They lack a true anus, but honeydew-like waste is slowly excreted from their top surface, so they rarely need to detach and empty their gut. Their claws are more mobile and hooked than before, making them even better climbers and allowing them to hold onto flora with greater success against strong gusts of wind. The position of their chemoreceptive patches has been inverted, placing them on the undersides of their arms instead of the top, allowing them to taste what they walk on instead of relying on airborne scent.

Plantkissers live almost exclusively on flora, and those that fall off their host plant must find another. In order to help prevent their offspring from falling off of trees, newborns are covered in a sticky slime at birth which evaporates over time, keeping them attached to the plant they were born on until they can get a good grip. This slime is also moist, which has caused some species of Plantkisser to actually lay their eggs instead. In general, species that retain ovovivipary are more common in dry environments where the slime evaporates too quickly to keep eggs moist before they hatch, though even egg-layers hatch fairly quickly due to previously relying on nourishment from their mothers. Female Plantkissers can also reproduce asexually, producing clones of themselves to recover from a disturbance to their population. Plantkissers can and do fall off their host plant anyway, as they can’t hang upside-down and depend almost entirely on their mouth to hold on at all, and they will consume detritus if they cannot find a new host right away. The need for some kind of food between hosts is a major part of what has limited Plantkissers to Orpington, as there is very little detritus in the hot desert. Though they cannot feed through bark, Plantkisser populations make it to the tops of trees regardless either by starting on saplings or being blown between trees by wind.

There are many species of Plantkisser. The smallest species generally feed on very small ground flora, such as Shootstems, Stemleaves, and smaller Asterplents. The size of a given species increases with the size of the flora they feed from, the largest ones living on the leaves of Asterplorts. Species which feed on green flora are green, but those that feed on violet flora are a violet hue, making use of anthocyanin to keep them hidden from their predators, the Scorpioworts. Like their ancestor, Plantkissers reproduce sexually using gonopods on the ends of each arm, and they can come in hermaphroditic variations with alternating male and female arms.