Biology and Ecology

Helevos has two separate families of life, which compete with each other for resources and space. Various cultures give different names for these two competing families, but in Anrel they are commonly called “the Viridplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigVirid

Referring to the Virid Kingdom of flora and fauna, toxic to human life. and the Greenplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigGreen

The Green Kingdom of flora and fauna includes humans, mammals, birds, whales, greenfish, and most green plants and crops cultivated by humankind.”, a quotation from the Tirennion.

The Green Kingdom includes all the red-blooded mammals, humans, and a wide range of plants, trees and other animals which surround and support the greenplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigGreen

The Green Kingdom of flora and fauna includes humans, mammals, birds, whales, greenfish, and most green plants and crops cultivated by humankind. ecosystem. The Virid Kingdom is found in the wild areas outside settled lands, the jungles and deep seas, with their creatures, predators and pests. The two are ecologically isolated, since the fruits, meat and even the soil of the two are toxic to each other.

The green ecosystem is so named because it encompasses the wide variety plants and animals found in areas of human settlement and civilisation, including most food crops and a wide variety of grasses, herbs, trees and other flora. It includes all “red-blooded” creatures, notably humans, all mammals and birds, a wide diversity of arthropod scavengers and soil worms, as well as a multiplicity of microorganisms. In the sea the green kingdom is mainly confined to shallow coastal areas, with plants such as vertkelps and seagreens, greenfish and whales.

Green ecosystems have a soil structure maintained by a complex system of soil bacteria and fungi, along with green plant roots and burrowing animals. Several species specialise in preventing encroachment by viridplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigVirid

Referring to the Virid Kingdom of flora and fauna, toxic to human life. succession, ream moss being one of the most widespread.

Green plants are so named because they use the pigment chlorophyll to convert sunlight into energy. They thrive in a relatively narrow range of climate and altitude, the lowland temperate zones, and require a suitable soil structure with a suitable pH. All green plants are angiosperms, producing both flowers and seed-bearing fruiting bodies, either pollinated by the wind or by vector animals such as humbers, grazing animals or various virid creatures. Green ecosystems always outcompete virid weeds in areas in which conditions are ideal, since their roots are host to a range of symbiotic micro-organisms which both gather nutrients, are a toxic to virid roots. However, virid ecosystems outcompete the green in regions where conditions are not optimal, so that virid plants will invade green marginal areas if they are not maintained.

Well-established optimal green areas will turn into green open forest if not cultivated. Biodiverse green forests are difficult for virid weeds to encroach upon, so they are often planted on the borders of human cultivation, since they not only provide food and fuel, but are the best buffer against virid encroachment.

Green animals are all mammalian, being endothermic, viviparous, and weaning their young. As such their relative strength, speed and intelligence makes them easily the match of any virid creature, and green predators easily deter any virid intruders from their territory. However, green animals require a range of carbohydrates, proteins and nutritional enzymes only sourced via green plants, so that even wide-ranging predatory animals are restricted to green regions.

Virid life is found everywhere beyond human cultivation, filling the lands untouched by human hands with wild forests, jungles and swamps. Unlike the gentle tones of green grass and trees, virid vegetation can seem harsh and unsettling to the human eye, with fleshy leaves in a variety of bright limes or acid greens, often variegated with slashes and spots of all shades from yellow to purple. Virid forests are rich with shade-loving bushes and ground-creepers, often coloured more blue-green, with purple or magenta foliage. Some virid bushes and fruiting plants more closely resemble fungi, with succulent fleshy trunks, stems and ribs and violent reds and purples, and gill-like structures emitting airborne spores instead of dropping seeds.

While some societies have a fear of virid life and a taboo against consuming or even touching it, today many spices, woods, oils and other useful products are cultivated from the virid kingdom.

Virid life evolved and thrived mainly in the sea for the early part of it's history. On the expanses of warm shallow continental shelf, sea life is rich and diverse, more so than land equivalents which are at a comparatively primitive stage of evolution.

Whilst green plants are all angiosperms, there are as yet no true flowering virid plants, although many virid shrubs and trees have evolved colourful flower-like bracts and other structures for distributing and pollinating their seeds. Virid plants can absorb a wider range of sunlight than green, and instead of using chlorophyll for photosynthesis, they use a range of photopigments called chromophylls, including retinal and porphyrins. These absorb strongly in the blue, yellow and parts of the green spectrum. As a result, virid plants appear a light purplish-green.

Most land-based and sea creatures are tetrachromatic, capable of seeing a far wider range of colours than mammals, including humans. This accounts for the diversity in colour and markings in virid plants and animals, much of which is not even visible to human vision.

While virid animals require many of the same sugars and proteins as red-blooded mammals, their nutritional requirements are in other ways very different. To mammals, virid plantlife is non-nutritious at best, deadly poison at worst. The main culprit is the chromophylls, which are high in a form of vitamin A. Whilst beneficial in small quantities, when mammals eat virid leafy plants it causes vitamin poisoning. This results in symptoms from sickness to death, as well as birth defects.

Virid fruits may appear rich and juicy, but to mammals are either unpleasant tasting or burning to the tongue. Some fruits and roots are consumed by humans, since they contain useful sugars and simple carbohydrates, but this must be supplemented with nutritious green food. Most have little nutritional value to humans and all red-blooded creatures, although they are happily consumed by virid life. There are many folk tales of men and women lost in wild areas, starving to death despite gorging themselves on seemingly sweet virid fruits.

Virid plants contain arsenides, although not in sufficient quantities or in a sufficiently bioavailable state to be poisonous to humans except with high, lifelong consumption. However, forest fires, particularly those involving virid grasses, can cause sickness and even death due to creation of arsine gas.

Many societies throughout history have had taboos against consuming virid life, and this persists most strongly in Anrel, where anything made from virid life is shunned as yabber, mean contemptible and unclean. In Anásthias many virid plants are cultivated for a wide variety of uses, for instruction materials, textiles, preservatives, medicines and even in cookingplugin-autotooltip__small plugin-autotooltip_bigFood

List of foods and foodstuffs:

topics as herbs, spices.

The roots of virid and green plants are toxic to each other, so they cannot grow side by side. In regions where both are present, they grow in separate stands, with a barren area in between called “virid burn”. This is exploited in various parts of the world, since planting virid hedgerows limits the spread of green crops and provides an effective barrier between fields.

In areas where virid or green are in the majority, the opposing variety tends to die off. Virid vegetation, having more biodiversity, tends to be slightly more competitive than green life, so that areas abandoned by human habitation will very slowly revert to a virid state.

Ream moss is the main successionary crop used by farmers to green new land cleared of virid forest. This moss is one of the few plants able to colonise the burn between virid and green, as its secretions inhibit and kill virid roots.