Beach Chandelier

Split off from the Chandelieruby, the Beach Chandelier made its way to the beach and altered its reproductive method. It now comes in male and female, like many terran trees, and the female (pictured) has developed receptive pores near the ends of her exposed spore roots, allowing her to be pollinated—a far more effective method of reproduction than simple airborne broadcast-spawning. The zygotes are then placed in the root’s hanging crystal, now only present in the females, which eventually breaks off and is washed into the ocean. The ocean is very efficient at carrying these hardy crystal seeds to other beaches, where the Beach Chandelier swiftly spread as a result. If the female receives no spores, she will instead drop the seed with a clone of her own DNA, which helped in the conquest of Western Glicker as it meant females could be present and thriving on the beaches long before any male arrived. The seeds appear to hatch like eggs when they sprout as a result of their chitinous crystal coating.

The Beach Chandelier has completely lost its detritivory in defiance of its mushroom-like appearance, instead getting its energy purely through photosynthesis. This helped it to compete with other beach flora which were still mixotrophs. It is otherwise much like its ancestor: it has a long stalk of fungal core, exposed specialized spore roots, the ability to reproduce through budding and subterranean waterborne spores, and it performs photosynthesis using a red pigment.