Staggered Colony Crystal

The Staggered Colony Crystal split from its ancestor. Its mycelial network is once again exclusively underground in order to protect it from predators, ice, and to keep it from desiccating in the intertidal zone. As a result, the part of the organism visible above ground is now the much smaller crystals staggered across a wide area instead. The mycelial network, no longer benefiting from being a huge mass, is also much thinner, returning once more to the ancestral state more like the mycelium of Terran mushrooms. The Staggered Colony Crystal has lost its vascular system, which limits the size of any of its potential descendants.

The Staggered Colony Crystal is named for the way it grows compared to its ancestor. The mycelium, when dug up, is shaped very differently, forming a network with scattered swollen parts which crystals grow from. Instead of acting as a single organism with many crystals, each crystal cluster and the swelling it grows from is an individual which can survive when severed from the rest. The fungal portion, which retains the digestive enzymes of its ancestor, serves to gather as much food as possible from the substrate in order to fuel the growth of the crystals. The crystals serve as fruiting bodies, producing spores using both the material gathered by the mycelium and food produced using photosynthesis. It produces these crystals only during the summer. Spores are released from openings along the edge of each crystal facet.

The spores are monokaryotic, haploid, and consist of two cells--shell and core. Unlike ancestral crystal flora, which have their spores find one another before germinating, Staggered Colony Crystal spores germinate first and then meet and fuse with other germinating spores, the fungal portion growing into dikaryotic mycelia while the plant portion remains unfused and dormant. When crystals are formed, the nuclei of some of the dikaryons fuse together, turning them into monokaryons and allowing them to undergo the cellular differentiation necessary to form the core of the crystal. Exiting dormancy, the plant-like cells fuse and become diploid monokaryons as well so that they may grow into the shell. The crystal fruiting body then creates its own haploid spores, repeating the cycle.

The Staggered Colony Crystal makes use of the color variability ancestral to crystal flora, using different pigments for different lighting conditions whenever it buds a new crystal. As a result, the color of this species changes dramatically at different depths, though it is almost always green near the shore and in the intertidal zone. The deepest-living individuals can come in colors such as red and gold.