In The Way of Kings, many plants, such as grass, retreat into the ground when disturbed for protection form highstorms. Have the books or Brandon said anything about how this works? Do Rosharan plants have nervous systems, or are they like Venus fly traps?
asked Jul 5, 2019 at 23:02
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1fairly certain they are like fly traps– AnthelothCommented Jul 6, 2019 at 17:56
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1Are you talking about centralized nervous systems like a mammal would have? Almost certainly not. Something simplistic or decentralized? That might work. But it's probably some kind of chem/bio trigger like with a flytrap.– RadhilCommented Jul 7, 2019 at 21:29
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1 Answer
This explanation by Sanderson (At JordanCon, April 2016) seems to strongly imply there is no nervous system (as such a tissue would imply animals).
Questioner I get the impression after reading Stormlight 1 and 2 that a lot of what you would consider to be flora, plant-life, is actually something like coral in the ocean which is actually an animal. So is there actually any flora on Roshar outside out of, like, Shinovar?
Brandon Sanderson Yeah, yeah, like almost all the things you see as flora are actual flora. Like, rockbuds are flora, trees are flora, shalebark is not, and some of the things like that-- haspers are not, and some of these things are more-- are animal life, are fauna. But grass is actually a flora, and trees.
As an extra-point, none of the shema shown in the stormlight seem to show a nervous system.
With that said, we can't completely compare the phisiology to that of earth plants as there are, at least, two very important phisiology differences:
1. Roharan plants can make use of crem to compensate for the weak soil-
..."lot of the trees that you'll find on Roshar, they will be using crem that falls and you use this to create shells, you use this to infuse your bark, they use this in a lot of different ways, the minerals there are very important because they're not getting from the soil what plants on our world get from soil"... Sanderson At JordanCon, April 2016
2. Rosharan plants can use stormlight.
QuestionerFor Words of Radiance, could you put a comment about something in the upcoming books, something not too specific, just something I can think about? Something like "Renarin has a spren" you wrote for somebody else in The Way of Kings?
Brandon Sanderson [written] Stormlight makes plants grow.
