Coinstacks

Coinstacks are various cylinder-shaped photosynthetic colonies which have managed to etch out a niche among established flora thanks to their difficult-to-digest nature. They are named for their layered appearance, which causes them to look like stacks of tiny golden coins. They have developed two cell types, the golden photosynthesizing cells and the colorless transport cells. The latter run underground as tiny roots, collecting nutrients as well as silica to be used to create silicone. They can also exist as single cells, but all species can create these colonies and mainly break up when disturbed or when lighting conditions deteriorate, prompting them to disperse.

To make better use of their photosynthesis to produce more sugars, Coinstacks have switched to a new method of obtaining silicon for use in silicone production. Rather than directly breaking up silica, they first use water to convert it to monosilicic acid before extracting pure silicon, more like terran rice plants. Because of this, they have completely lost their alternative quartz-photosynthesis and only use sugar-making photosynthesis.

Coinstacks vary little between species. Polar species tend to be a deeper, sometimes more reddish orange than tropical species, and tropical species tend to be taller. Species which live in the rare sunlit volcanic regions may have thicker coatings of silicone to serve as protection from any intense heat they are exposed to. Otherwise, however, distinguishing between the roughly 200 species is incredibly difficult.