There are two types of garden dweller in Earthtongue: fungus and bugs, which are then divided into a number of categories that determine method of spread and food type. We'll start with the simple ones first: molds.
Mold
The molds will provide the majority of your visible biomass and food for your ecosystem. The simplest is the Pink Mold. It erects lots of flowers, consumes minimal water and nutrients, and grows horizontally very quickly, and is thus resilient to over-consumption.
The next is Blue Mold. This variant only erects flowers adjacent to walls, allowing to spread up. It wont get trapped in pits and shortfalls like other molds are prone to. However, it also consumes more nutrients to do so. The blue mold wont be as blanketing as the pink mold, as it doesn't spread well over long horizontal distances; it thrives over rocky terrain though.
Green Mold erects flowers randomly across its surface. This means that spore production can be wasteful (as spores landing on occupied soil will disappear). Each unit of mold decides whether or not it will produce a flower. If the mold lands atop a protrusion and rolls sterile then the mold is trapped in that direction.
Yellow Mold will only erect flowers at intervals, remaining dormant otherwise. Its spread is slower, but it presumably consumes fewer nutrients and water for its duration.
Sundew Mold is by far the prettiest and most interesting mold. A green body with bright red flowers, it secretes a substance that slowly kills whatever attempts to graze upon it. Only by consuming its youngling stalks or by perching upon another bug (presumably already dead) can it be eaten safely. This mold is safe from hungry grazers and will likely survive locust or beetle overproduction because of its defences. The cone beetle also has a unique defence to the mold, and can graze within it free of harm; it has even go so far as to aid in the spreading of sundew spores by carrying them inside themselves outside of the colony. Thus the sundew will often grow patchily in distant areas across your garden.
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| Pink Mold; your best friend |
The pods are stolid, more compact fungi than the molds. They often express fruiting bodies that spread spores in a dependant fashion. They are slower growing than molds, and significantly more vulnerable to consumption. They require less minerals typically than molds however, and can spread over much greater distances than molds.
Brown Pods are smallish and brown, with a flat base and short roots. After a time, the brown pod swells into a ball and ejects spores outwards, reducing down to its base in cyclic fashion. Compared to the red pod, this is a fairly slow method of reproduction.
The Red Pod is a tall, ugly fungus. It continuously ejects spores above it, forming a red cloud that spreads the pods across vast distances given time. The red pod can be a nuisance because of this; it will compete for space with your molds and generally clutters the place with its spores, choking out more fragile plants. It is also remarkably hard to eradicate with meteor showers.
The Fruit Pod is a peculiar blue plant, with short purple tendrils. Unlike its more mundane cousins, it doesn't ejaculate spores with wild abandon. Instead, it awaits some critter to come consume its seeds, which then survive the digestive passage and emerge elsewhere, to sprout a new pod. Thus, your fruit pods will be few and far between, and growing them can be a challenge. But they are very pretty.
The last pod is the Hungry Pod. A remarkably ugly plant, its open purple crocodile mouth consumes creeps as they walk across it. After a short period of rumination, it opens its jaws to eject some pod spores in a small area around it, and awaits its next dinner. Like the brown pod, its procreative method is slow, leaving them prone to being suffocated by the spores of more aggressive plants such as the red pod or molds. The Hungry Pod requires live food, and so is best placed near existing growth, meaning growing the pod successfully can be difficult.
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| This shit will take over |
Mushrooms
They come in two varieties: blue and pink. Mushrooms generally looks quite cool, at least more so than pods.
The Blue Mushroom has the ability to grow to large heights, and can be quite impressive, although it must be left in peace to achieve anything. They grow in colonies, with a root system that can very quickly expand underground to reach deep water and nutrient. The roots of the blue mushroom are omnidirectional, unlike its pink cousin. They drop spores adjacent to each other, and often grow quickly, so large mushroom towns can sprout unchecked in the isolated parts of your garden. They don't fare too well in crowded areas however.
The Pink Mushroom is much the same as the blue, but instead of tall reaching caps, it will grow to a short colony height, with all further caps working towards the same. Thus spores that fall into crevasses will emerge at least to the surface, sometimes to match the height of the closest stalk. The roots will grow deep, but only vertical, unlike the blue mushroom. Both mushroom types are vulnerable to mineral shortages and grazing.
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| On a big enough hill, Blue Mushrooms can get mad big |
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| Pink Mushrooms only grow down! |
Stalks
Technically, mushrooms come under stalks, but hey ho. Here we have the pitcher stalk and the wind comb.
Pitcher Stalks looks like little red buttons that sprout a short distance above the soil. They are very fragile to grazers, but there is much fun to be had plucking flying bugs out from the night sky and dropping them into the little red mouths. It seems that they can only consume flying bugs; they also consume nutrients as it falls into their mouths. So if left on their own, the pitcher plant can survive. Like the Hungry Pod, they only eject seeds after a meal.
The Wind Comb is a tall, shaky fungus that at first took some time to figure out. It grows very quickly vertically, but can remain dormant in the soil for some time. Its short roots means it cannot grow on the nutrients of the ground alone, and so requires critters to die upon it to nourish it. Its stalk can reach a height greater than that of any other fungus, but will be quickly reduced by grazers. To reproduce, it needs a flying critter to get stuck in its entrapping stalk (hence the enormous height); it's death throes release spores adjacent.
Cordyceps
Whilst its actually a mold, the Cordyceps is very different to its colour-coded cousins. The "white mold" is modelled after its real-world counterpart. It grows small, whitish stalks, in a single tile of soil. When a grazer comes along to eat it, it remains within the grazer, until hopefully a carnivorous bug consumes the grazer (such as a mantis). When the predator dies, the cordyceps spores are released into the soil directly beneath, to continue the cycle.
Whilst its hard to properly monitor, when the cordyceps successfully emerges from its host, it will blanket the horizontal landmass, ready for consumption in a visible manner.
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| Bottom left, a cloud of death |
Above are all the fungus' in Earthtongue. They can be beautiful, and difficult, and very fragile, and sometimes terrifyingly aggressive, but understanding how they work is key to growing your garden. A mixture of molds is necessary (not to mention much more exciting than just pink) to supporting every type of bug.
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