Y is for Yem-Thress

         (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Bittersweetness & Light, my new collection of hope-filled, joy-inducing fantasy and sci fi short stories, poems, and art.)

        Here’s an excerpt from somewhere in the middle of the short story “A Missionary to the Yem-Thress Zone of Contention.”

        The Facilitator came up behind Mary Fisher and guided her out of the Great Hall, backwards so as not to have to turn around in one direction or the other and thus seem to favor one potentate over the other.  They led her back to her room, and as soon as they were inside with the portal closed, their limbs went slack.

        “You must be trying to get me executed!” they groaned, but the UniTrans marked the tone with a “wry humor” tag.

        “I did warn you.”  She raised both arms in the waving gesture that the UniTrans suggested would indicate friendly affection.  “I’m very grateful for your help.  But now I’ve done my piece and I’ll go home and leave you, hopefully in peace.  I certainly hope you won’t suffer for listening to the message and helping me share it.”

        A buzz on the portal startled them both, making the Facilitator contract so suddenly their elaborate collar slid down over their shoulders.  “You are a wreck!” Mary said, her own tone marked with wry humor as the Facilitator relaxed to normal dimensions and rearranged their collar.  They opened the door and a being entered, wearing the livery of the Thress Emperor and bearing a round box intricately carved from some reddish substance that looked to Mary like coral.

        “For the Ambassador from the Divine Spirit,” they said.  Mary tried to read the Thress courtier’s expression, but the UniTrans marked it only “formal.”  The being opened the box and presented it to Mary.  Inside, nestled on a soft blue cushion, was an object about as large as her open hand and shaped like a rounded star.  It was made of some sort of polished stone with waving gold striations, studded with blue glass bubbles.

        “A shkreth!” the Facilitator breathed in a voice filled with awe.

        The courtier blinked graciously.

        This story pulls on a lot of threads that interest me.  It’s a Quaker story in disguise (actually based on a true story from 1658, reimagined as some kind of far-future sci fi).  It’s full of linguistic explorations, as the characters attempt to communicate difficult philosophical concepts across widely alien cultures, relying on some sort of universal translator.  It’s imagining some of the different ways the universe could be viewed by creatures with very different biology (including pentaradial symmetry).  It’s about the possibility of connection and cooperation.

        Today’s illustrations are two shkreth and a very rough sketch of what I imagine the Yem-Thress might look like.

        Marketing Moral: My marketing “morals” have all been about things you could do for me, so how about for once I offer you some free stuff?  Some of the offers are tit-for-tat:

• Sign up for my newsletter and I’ll send you a pdf sampler of some of my art and poetry concerning dragons.

• If you own or have read my book On the Virtues of Beasts of the Realms of Imagination, leave a review somewhere (and let me know where) and I’ll send you a pdf of a bonus page for the book that includes new creatures.

• There’s a giveaway right now on Bookfunnel where you can get lots of free ebooks, including a collection of Round Robin Stories (Volume Three), one of which I collaborated on.

        Plus a few other things are straight-up, no-strings-attached free:

• If you go to my Books and Writing page, you’ll find links to 7 of my stories and poems that are published on-line and available to read any time.  (Some of them were already linked during the alphabet, but there are also a few others that aren’t from this book.)

• Do you like coloring pages?  You can download several here.  Plus, in the same folder there's also a memory game you can print out.

        Proper Moral: Fortune favors the bold – but perhaps even more, karma favors those with integrity.

        Have you ever been able to reach across a cultural divide and make a connection with someone you expected to be very different?

[Pictures, Shkreth, rubber block prints with digital manipulation;

The Facilitator, pen on paper by AEGNydam from Bittersweetness & Light, 2025 (See NydamPrints.com).]

V is for Venusians

         (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Bittersweetness & Light, my new collection of hope-filled, joy-inducing fantasy and sci fi short stories, poems, and art.  I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, and I’ve also been sharing some of the background on why we urgently need joyful stories.  If you like strange creatures, magical worlds, and being reminded of the good to be found in the world, it’s not too late to come along with me!  It’s also not to late to visit other bloggers, to be found at the A to Z Master List.)

        These Venusian Medusae are one of the pieces of art that stands alone in the book, without illustrating a story or poem.  Or at least, I haven’t written anything that goes with it - but I still think it tells a story, and I invite everyone to imagine what that story might be.

        The title is “Symbiote City,” because I imagine that these diverse species of medusae are living symbiotically in the cloud decks of Venus, relying on each other to make life possible in a very challenging environment.  They are called medusae, by the way, not because of the petrifying Medusa of Greek mythology, but because “medusa” is the scientific name for jellyfish.  (Of course, fun Words-of-the-Month fact, the jellyfish are named after the Gorgon, presumably because of their tentacles.)

        This is one of those posts where, rather than bore myself with repetition, I will simply send you to read a prior post that explains what this rubber block print is all about: Symbiote City.  (And don't miss the link from there to even more speculation about Life on Venus.)

        Marketing Moral: While we’re on the subject of art, how about fan art!  Not only is it wonderful and affirming to the author whose work you’re fanning, but if you share it on-line or with friends it may pique the interest of others.

        Proper Moral: No man is an island.  Nor woman, nor jellyfish, nor any other creature.  And anyone who tells you they accomplished something big without any assistance from anyone else is lying.  So we should all go ahead and embrace our symbioses.

        Do you think there’s life out there somewhere?  What about sentient life?  What about sentient jellyfish life?

[Picture: Symbiote City (Venusian Medusae), rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2020 (Image from Bittersweetness & Light, but originals are still available at NydamPrints.com).]

U is for Utopia

         (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Bittersweetness & Light, my new collection of hope-filled, joy-inducing fantasy and sci fi short stories, poems, and art.)

        Utopia was written in 1516 by Thomas More, who coined the word from Greek roots meaning “place that is not a place.”  (Fun Words-of-the-Month fact: he had also considered using the Latin roots, which would have given us Nusquama.)  His book described a society that was supposed to be perfect, and while there’s a good deal of debate over just how satirical More was being and how perfect he actually thought his imagined society would be, nevertheless the name he coined has now come to mean any perfect society.  I don’t want to include too much of a spoiler about my own story here, but in “The Scanner’s Tale,” an asteroid scanner crash-lands in a strange, alien mushroom garden, and has to discover whether it’s a utopia or a nightmare.

        Here’s an excerpt.

        I was lying in the dark, leaning against something firm beneath my head.  The air was fresh, with a faint leafy scent.  There was an incredible sense of security.  Of care.  I opened my eyes to a dim, warm, greenish-yellowish glow, like the light of fireflies.  For a moment I thought I’d entered fairyland, with a million sparkling lights sprinkled through a fantasy garden around me.  Green and blue vines looped like party streamers everywhere.  It was beautiful, serene...  But my body was sore, and although I lay relatively comfortably, my left arm stung and throbbed, and I lifted it experimentally.  As I moved, I felt the faintest sense of resistance, as if I were covered in cobwebs.

        I looked down at myself then, and in that weird light I saw tiny threads laced all over my skin, pale and clinging, like I was already dead and a fungus was growing across my rotting flesh.  I think I shrieked, and found a thicker tendril at the corner of my mouth, oozing some sweet liquid.  I scrambled to my feet, rubbing at myself franticly to tear away the sticky network of tendrils, trampling away the slightly heavier webs that had grown across my feet, up to the edges of my boots where they could find my skin, as if they were drawn vampire-like to the blood on my shins.  An acrid smell filled the air from the ripped vines, and I felt as if something were tearing at me, although the growth was off me now.

        I bolted about five panicked steps in some random direction, flailing at the dangling threads that snagged at my face and hair, before I pulled myself together enough to look around and get my bearings.  I was in a cavern, although I could see the purple sky at one end where the cave became the bottom of a deep crevice opening to the surface.  The glimmering light came from some sort of luminous pods scattered through the growth, which wove across the entire space like a jungle.  I could see the place where I had been lying, propped between the roots of the largest plant-like thing.  I would call it a tree, except that it seemed softer and more flexible, and its skin – too soft and smooth to call it bark – was streaked in bright green and turquoise.  Its twigs and leaves were very slightly moving, and while I tried to tell myself that of course my panicked leap had shaken the branches, it looked more as if the leaves were feeling for me.  Or... smelling for me.

        The alien world in the story was inspired by mycorrhyzal networks, and the recent discoveries about these fungal communities have been blowing scientists’ minds.  If you haven’t read about them, go look it up right now!

        To illustrate the story, I collected a bunch of my various past block prints that included mushrooms and other plant life, and digitally collaged bits and pieces into a sort of jungle scene.  Then I added “alien” color to jazz it up.  Plus I made a variety of little mushroomy  bits to brighten up the pages through the story.  You can see some of the originals that donated parts here and here (but several others are sold out and no longer posted).

        If you’re wondering why some of my illustrations are “faux block prints” and others are these collages instead of original “real” block prints, the answer is in the medium itself.  If you remember the history of relief block printing, it was invented as a method of reproduction.  Before the invention of computers and printers, xerox machines, photography, and other simple methods of reproduction, block prints were the best way to print a repeated design on yards and yards of fabric or create hundreds of copies of a book or poster.  Relief block printmaking is a great way to make multiples — but it’s an incredibly inefficient way to make a single image.  There’s no point in my going through all the effort of carving a physical block, rolling with ink, and pressing on paper, all for a single image to scan, if I won’t be creating an entire edition of originals.  If an illustration for a particular story or poem is too specific to have appeal as a free-standing work of art, it doesn’t make sense to create a whole new block just to scan it once.  Instead, if I won’t have any use for actual originals to offer people as artwork in their own right, and all I really need is the digital image to put into my digital document, it makes a lot more sense just to work digitally in the first place.  (You can read more about my “faux block print” process here.)

        Marketing Moral: Nominate my book for awards and vote for it - if this is something you encounter.  Maybe most of us don’t get to vote on literary awards, but some awards do

involve nominations or votes from the public, so if the opportunity arises, keep my books in mind!

        Proper Moral: You can tell a tree by its fruit.  A utopian society will increase the happiness of all its inhabitants.

        Do you like mushrooms?  Adorable, gross, or tasty?  (And if you like your mushrooms fictional, check out my previous post Fantasy Fungus.)

[Pictures: Mushroom world digital collages by AEGNydam from Bittersweetness & Light, 2025 (See NydamPrints.com).]

Magical Botany W

         Welcome to the #AtoZChallenge ! 

My theme this year is the Botany of the Realms of Imagination, in which I share a selection of the magical plants of folklore, fairy tale, and fantasy.  You can find all my fellow A to Z bloggers on the Master List of participating blogs here.

        W is for Waqwaq tree, a strange and miraculous tree that grows all kinds of animals from its branches — but there’s a certain amount of disagreement about the details.  According to some versions it grows beautiful women, because that’s how the all-female population of the Islands of Waqwaq reproduces.  According to other reports the tree grows the heads of men, women, and monstrous animals, and they all scream all the time.  Then there’s the 1388 account that says the tree is covered with heads of women, birds, horses, ducks, monkeys, hares, foxes, and rams… but the reason for these fruits is that the tree eats the animals, and then their heads bloom from it like flowers!  But in any case, the Waqwaq tree and the land of Waqwaq serve as symbols of the very edges of the imagination in Arabic lore.  (For those

who like some of the non-magical scholarly background, it is likely that Persian tales of the Waqwaq tree influenced both the jinmenju tree of Japan, introduced at J, and the oracular Trees of the Sun and Moon encountered by Alexander the Great back at O.)

        The willow is well-known as a real-world mundane tree, but there are also a number of magical species in the willow family.  Old Man Willow of Middle-earth is an old and evil tree who makes all paths through the Old Forest turn to himself at its heart.  He then lulls trespassers to sleep so that he can engulf and imprison them within his huge, gnarled trunk.  Then there’s the Whomping Willow, the most famous specimen of which is grown on the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.  This is a particularly violent tree whose arm-like limbs will attack anything within range, pummelling its victims with knotty branches writhing and

swinging like thick, heavy fists.  And finally, I have to include a gentler species, the pussy willow tree that grows real kittens, which I myself have recorded in a small relief block print.

        Woodland tweezers are another group of parallel plants described by Leo Lionni.  They grow in sociobotanical colonies in which the areas of growth may be determined by a mind which is composed of the rootstock of the tree beneath which these plants live.  (And keep in mind that Lionni recorded this before the discovery of mycorrhizal networks!)

        Finally, as I foreshadowed earlier, now that we’ve reached W it’s time to talk about world trees.  Like trees of life (see L) and often somewhat hybridized with them, these are a whole class of varied species that have occurred in cultures around the world.  The defining characteristic of a world tree is that it connects the heavens, the terrestrial world, and the underworld.  Often it holds up the heavens with its branches, and often it also serves as the axis mundi, which is the center or axis of the

world.  It represents order and harmony.  World trees support all kinds of life, but very frequently there are two particular creatures associated with them: a bird or celestial creature, often an eagle, living at the crown, and a dragon or serpent living down among the roots.  These motifs hint that some of our previous magical trees can also be considered world trees, including Fusang with suns in its branches, Golden Apple with a dragon at its base, Huluppu with a magic bird up top and a magic serpent in the roots, Jo Mu with its trunk forming a path between earth and heaven, and Kalpavriksha serving as an axis mundi on Mt Meru.  And even though we have only a few letters left in the alphabet, there are still a couple of world trees to come.

        The moral of W is that plant and botanical networks may have a lot more purpose and agency than the European Enlightenment gave them credit for.  Modern science with its discoveries about mycorrhizal networks is only just now catching up with ancient mythology in its understanding of the ways trees really do connect everything.  Gardening tip of the day: don’t make the plants angry!

        Do you have any willows in your neighborhood — and have you ever noticed any suspicious behavior from them?

[Pictures: Waq-waq, painting from Mughal India, early 17th century (Image from The Cleveland Museum of Art);

Waqwaq Tree, painting from Golconda, India, early 17th century (Image from The Met);

Old Man Willow, illustration by John Howe from The Hobbit, 1989 (Image from The One Ring);

Whomping Willow, illustration by Mary GrandPré from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, 1999;

Pussy Willows, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2022 (now sold out);

Woodland Tweezers, illustrations from Parallel Botany by Leo Lionni, 1977 (Images from Ariel S. Winter on Flickr);

World Tree, steel drum bas relief by anonymous Haitian artist (Image from Etsy shop MetalArtofHaiti);

World Tree, clay sculpture from Nayarit, Mexico, ca. 300BCE-300CE (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

World Tree, pysanka motif from Ukraine, ca. 2009 (Image from Wikimedia Commons).]

Magical Botany T

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is the Botany of the Realms of Imagination, in which I share a selection of the magical plants of folklore, fairy tale, and fantasy.  You can find out about the A to Z Challenge here.

        T seems to be a letter particularly richly grown with magical literary flora.  I’ll start with one of my all-time favorites, the Truffula Tree.  Truffula Trees have tall, slender trunks topped by bright-colored tufts.  The touch of their tufts is much softer than silk, and they have the sweet smell of fresh butterfly milk.  They’re also the favored habitat of Brown Bar-ba-loots, who eat the fruit of the Truffula Trees.  However, because truffula silk is so excellent for knitting thneeds, the trees were severely over-harvested in the 20th century, and are now nearly extinct.  Only careful conservation will be able to restore them and the beautiful habitat they provide - an appropriate reminder for Earth Day.

        Another classic is the triffid, a tall species of carnivorous plant that can walk about on three stubby “legs.”  Although they seem to have originated and spread faster in equatorial regions, triffids soon became invasive throughout the world.  They can be quite dangerous because they have a venomous stinger in the head, but the stinger can be docked, rendering them harmless for the next two years while the stinger regrows, when they can be pruned again.  When intact, the stinger is used to kill large prey instantly, which the triffid can then feed upon as it decomposes, plus they can also catch insects and small prey in the manner of a pitcher plant.  Despite these dangerous characteristics, triffids can be economically very useful as a source of high-quality oil.  Outside of oil farms, they are now mostly eradicated.

        Tesla trees are native to the planet Hyperion, where they are the defining species of the Flame Forest.  Named for the Tesla coil, these tall-trunked trees have a sort of bulb at the top in which they can store massive amounts of electricity that their branches draw in from static charge in the clouds.  When the trees discharge this electricity in powerful jolts like lightning strikes, it causes wildfires, which drive the cycle of regeneration and growth in the forest.

        While we’re covering the classics, I have to mention the Tumtum tree, even though we don’t know much about it.  In fact, all we know is that it grows in the tulgey wood, and is a good place to stand in uffish thought if you’re hoping to encounter a Jabberwock.  Most artists don’t pay a lot of attention to the Tumtum tree, but here are details of the tree from three of the books that I featured back in my prior post A Jumble of Jabberwocks, plus one extra.

        Finally, a much less well-known plant, another of the parallel plants (first introduced at P) described by Lionni: the tiril.  Of all parallel flora, tirils are the most widely distributed around the globe, and among the oldest.  They live in dense groups, and

although all parallel plants are black, tirils sport the widest array of black.  (And by the way, parallel plants are generally matterless, indifferent to the passage of time, and impossible to photograph.)  One tiril species has a habit of lodging itself ineradicably in the memory and occasionally forcibly reappearing in the mind.  Another is a powerful aphrodisiac, and yet another species produces a loud, high-pitched whistle, but always stops as soon as anyone tries to get near enough to investigate.

        Even now, the floral bounty of T is not quite exhausted, as you can always go back and revisit the triglav flower introduced at my post R is for Regeneration.

        Gardening tip of the day for commercial triffid farmers: you can’t dock their stingers without lowering the quality of their oil, so be sure to wear protective gear and enforce strict safety protocols.  Triffids know to aim for the exposed face and hands.

        While the moral of triffids may be that many plants have immense commercial value, the moral of Truffula Trees is not to let exploitation of this commercial value get out of hand.  The moral of Tumtum trees is that trees can be an excellent place to stand awhile, but the moral of Tesla trees is that sometimes it is not a good idea to stand under a tree: particularly during a thunderstorm.  In short, you can surely find some plant to justify any moral at all that you’d like to draw!

        What words of wisdom do you think people most need to hear?  And what plant can be used to illustrate that moral?

[Pictures: Truffula Trees, illustration by Dr. Seuss from The Lorax, 1971;

Triffid, illustration by John Wyndham from The Day of the Triffids, 1951 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Tesla Trees, detail of cover illustration by Garry Ruddell from Hyperion by Dan Simmons, 1990 edition (Image from Fandom);

Tumtum Tree, detail of illustration by Joel Stewart from Jabberwocky, 2003;

Tumtum Tree, detail of illustration by Kevin Hawkes from Imagine That! Poems of Never-Was selected by Prelutsky, 1998;

Tumtum Tree, detail of illustration by Eric Copeland from Poetry for Young People: Lewis Carroll, ed. E. Mendelson, 2000;

Tumtum Tree, detail of illustration by Stéphane Jorisch from Jabberwocky, 2004;

Tirils, illustrations from Parallel Botany by Leo Lionni, 1977 (Images from Ariel S. Winter on Flickr).]

Magical Botany R

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is the Botany of the Realms of Imagination, in which I share a selection of the magical plants of folklore, fairy tale, and fantasy.  If you don’t know about the #AtoZChallenge you can find out all about it here, and thank the organizers for putting it together for us.  And now, diving right in…

        R is for raskovnik, an herb which is neither rare nor remote, but it’s almost impossible to pick anyway, for the simple reason that it’s almost impossible to identify.  According to Slavic folklore, only certain animals can find it: a tortoise, a snake, or a hedgehog, depending on whether you’re in Bulgaria, Dalmatia, or Serbia.  But however hard it may be to find the raskovnik, it’s worth it, because this plant can unlock any sort of lock, and reveal hidden things, especially treasure.  All you have to do is touch the herb to the lock, or walk over the place where the treasure lies, and all is laid open before you.

        The opposite in some ways is red weed, a plant from the planet Mars.  Brought to Earth during the War of the Worlds in the mid-1890s, it spread across Earth invasively, marking the areas that the Martian invaders had conquered.  Its appearance is described by the original chronicler, H.G. Wells, as being a prickly creeper of a vivid blood-red tint.  It has cactus-like branches, but unlike cactus, it grows near water, and indeed water makes it grow so quickly and tumultuously that it entirely chokes the waterways.  It’s not poisonous, but it has a sickly, metallic taste, and it gives off a faint violet fluorescent glow.  On the planet Mars there’s so much red plant life that it’s what gives the entire planet its characteristic red hue, but on Earth, although the red weed initially spread vigorously, it was ultimately wiped out by Earth bacteria.

        The raskovnik may be beneficial, and the red weed may be destructive, but our third plant for the day is simply puzzlingly useless.  According to Douglas Adams, "The life cycle of ratchet screwdriver fruit is quite interesting. Once picked it needs a dark dusty drawer in which it can lie undisturbed for years. Then one night it suddenly hatches, discards its outer shell which crumbles to dust, and emerges as a totally unidentifiable little metal object with flanges at both ends and a sort of ridge and a sort of hole for a screw. This, when found, will get thrown away. No one knows what it is supposed to gain from this. Nature, in her infinite wisdom, is presumably working on it."

        I can’t resist adding two plant-animal hybrids from Scranimal Island, recorded by Jack Prelutsky.  The radishark is an underwater nightmare whose only thought is to catch and bite its prey, while the rhinocerose is too firmly rooted to chase anyone, and is beloved for its captivating blossom and enchanting scent.

        The moral of R is that nature does what it does, without regard for your opinion.  Nature doesn’t care whether or not you can identify its forms or make use of its products; nature may cause things to grow like fury or die away just as quickly, all without any intervention or effect from your actions.  Which means that our gardening tip of the day is: the one thing every gardener absolutely must cultivate is a spirit of patience and resignation.  You can’t control your garden!

        But if you could choose one plant to be able to grow successfully without fail, what would it be?

[Pictures: Raskovnik (actually European waterclover), plate from Flora von Deutschland, Österreich un der Schweiz by Otto Wilhelm Thomé, 1885 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Red weed, illustration (colored by AEGN) by Henrique Alvim Corrêa from The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, French edition of 1906 (Image from Wikimedia Commons);

Ratchet Screwdriver Fruit, illustration by AEGNydam, 2024;

Rhinocerose and Radishark, illustrations by Peter Sís from Scranimals by Jack Prelutsky, 2002.]

Magical Botany P

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is the Botany of the Realms of Imagination, in which I share a selection of the magical plants of folklore, fairy tale, and fantasy.  You can find out about the A to Z Challenge here.

        I have a particular soft spot for the peridexion tree, which was described in the earliest Greek proto-bestiaries from the second or third centuries and remained common in the medieval bestiaries.  It grows in India, where apparently the doves are in particular danger of being eaten by dragons.  Luckily for the doves, the peridexion tree not only has sweet fruit, but also repels dragons.  The doves are safe as long as they stay in the tree, since the dragons can’t go too near the tree and are afraid of its shadow.  We don’t know why the tree is so scary to dragons, only that if the doves want to be secure they need to stay among its branches.

        Our next plant was discovered more recently.  Protorbis is a genus of plants like mushrooms in form, color, and opacity.  Unlike mundane mushrooms, however, protorbis can be any size from infinitely small to infinitely large.  According to Leo Lionni, who wrote the definitive work on parallel botany, “Certain specimens in the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona… are as big as the nearby mesas, and are indeed often mistaken for these hills, with their flat tops…  Protorbis is in fact composed of a substance which has only superficially the aspect of stone. If it is struck with a normal geological hammer it emits a high-pitched metallic sound totally at variance with its heavy and opaque appearance...  Apart from P. minor, which disintegrates instantly at the least touch of a hand into the merest pinch of white powder, all specimens of Protorbis may be transported (size permitting), while their conservation requires no special techniques or environmental conditions.”

        I may as well mention one of my own imaginary plants, the pelif trees from which the Tungoldroleth elves of my Otherworld build their homes.  Each pelif tree sprouts new saplings in a circle all around the spread of its crown, so that when the original tree dies, there is a perfect circle of young trees.  The elves use these circles of living trees as frames for wattle and daub walls, with  thatched roofs to cover the middle.

        Finally, a couple of P plants from prior posts.  The flora-fauna hybrid the porcupineapple was featured in my post Of Porcupineapples and Umbrellaphants.  And don’t forget the moon pumpkins discovered by John Wilkins in about 1638.  You can revisit my prior post Moon-Veggies to learn how these giant

pumpkins are used as dwellings by the inhabitants of the moon.  (And while we’re on the subject of living in pumpkins, there’s also the giant pumpkin home of Peter Peter Pumpkin-Eater and his wife!)

        Unlike a number of other flora we’ve encountered so far in this alphabet, the moral of P is that plants can keep us safe and sheltered from the many dangers of the world.  Gardening tip of the day: surround yourself with benevolent plants, and you need fear neither dragons, nor wolves, nor ravening moon-beasts.

        When you think about it, any ordinary house built of wood is taking advantage of the shelter of plants, but setting that aside, how would you like to live in a plant?  A tree house?  A giant vegetable?  A burrow among the roots?  What sounds homiest to you?

[Pictures: Peridexion tree, illumination from Bestiary, c. 1275-1299 (Image from Bibliothèque nationale de France);

Peridexion, illumination from The Ashmole Bestiary, c. 1201-1225 (Image from Bodleian Library);

Peridexion, illumination from Bestiary, c. 1320 (Image from Bodleian Library);

Peridexion, illumination from Bestiary, 13th century (Image from Bibliothèque nationale de France);

Protorbis, illustrations from Parallel Botany by Leo Lionni, 1977 (Images from Ariel S. Winter on Flickr);

Pelif tree house, sketch by AEGNydam, 2024 (see the Otherworld series here);

Peter Peter Pumpkin-Eater, illustration by Billie Parks from Childcraft: Poems of Early Childhood, 1934;

Peter Peter Pumpkin-Eater, (inset) illustration by William Donahey from The Teenie Weenie Man’s Mother Goose, 1921 (Image from International Children’s Digital Library).]

Magical Botany N

         Welcome to the April A to Z Blog Challenge!  My theme this year is the Botany of the Realms of Imagination, in which I share a selection of the magical plants of folklore, fairy tale, and fantasy.  You can find out more about the A to Z Challenge here.

        Twelve Nariphon trees grow in the ancient kingdom of Sivi, where they were planted by Indra.  Their magical trait is that their fruit grows in the shape of beautiful maidens, who are attached at the crown of the head and emerge feet first from the buds.  These Nariphon maidens are just like human women except in having no bones.  They can sing and dance, and also possess some other magical and medicinal powers.  Each fruit lasts for seven days before it withers, but if picked, the Nariphon maiden can be taken home by the lustful.  The purpose of the trees is to protect real women from lustful men, by providing a distraction and substitute.  Divine blow-up porn dolls for a good cause.

        We travel next into the center of the Earth to find the tree people of Nazar.  Nazar is a planet that orbits around the bright core of Earth, which is otherwise completely hollow inside.  The tree people of Nazar have up to six arms, but very short legs.  They are intelligent and highly civilized, including a belief in the equality of the sexes.  Like ents, they believe things should be thought through slowly, and distrust jumping to conclusions and learning too quickly.  Nazar and its sensible trees were discovered by Norwegian scholar Niels Klim in the eighteenth century.  You can read a little more about it, with a few more pictures, in my previous post on Intelligent Underground Trees.

        Nefertem is the ancient Egyptian god of the first sunlight, famous for his beauty, and he gives good luck to those who honor him.  What is he doing here in my alphabet of botany?  Well, he was born a blue lotus flower, which grew from the primal waters at the creation of the world.  Alas for my purposes, he doesn’t seem to retain any other botanical qualities beyond the flower’s fragrance.

        The moral of N is that apparently the line between plant and human can become very blurred.  Plants can easily turn human, or can simply be more advanced than humans to begin with.  Gardening tip of the day: the plants may be unimpressed by your claims of moral virtue because you’re vegetarian!

        What plant do you think might be the most intelligent?

[Pictures: Nariphon tree, illustration from Kitāb al-Bulhān (Book of Wonders), ca. 1330-1450 (Image from Bodleian Library);

 Nariphon I, acrylic and gold leaf on silk by Phaptawan Suwannakudt, 1996 (Image from National Gallery Singapore);

Two scenes of the trees-citizens of Nazar, engravings from Niels Klim’s Journey Under the Ground, 1845 edition (Images from Internet Archive);

Two scenes of tree people, block prints(?) by Hans Scherfig from Niels Klims underjordiske rejse, 1961 (Images from Rundt om Holborg);

Nefertem, detail of Kheker frieze, tomb of Rameses I, ca. 1300BCE (Image from Theban Mapping Project).]