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[slowpokez]

Whenever I play Df I have a strange tendency to instead of viewing the game as it is represented by the tiles on the screen I end up visualising every object, every event, every character and so on, almost like reading a novel but instead of text you have the ASCII icons. Recently I thought to myself -How similar are our mental envisions of the Df world in general? It's quite a vague concept so after a few moments of pondering I came to the conclusion that prehaps I'd make some sort of a reference frame.
In the end I chose to scribble together some classic df-plants, kind of a lazy choice .





And they would of course be-
Plump helmet, Sweet pod, pigtails, cave wheat, quarry bush, dimple cup
Muck root, Bloated tuber, Kobold bulb, Prickle berry, Fisher berry, Wild strawberry
Sliver barb, Sun berry, Whip vine
Longland grass, Valley herb, Rat weed, Blade weed, Hide root, Rope reed.

The question is- How do you perceive them? Different? In that case how?

[Dorftrottel]

I would agree with most of these, with the excption of Sweet Pods,Bloated Tuber,Quarry Bush and Whip Vine.

In my mind's eye, sweet pods are long brown rods with pods sticking on them, like willow catkins. Or long green plants with sticky culms and pods at the end, like papaver that hasn't bloomed yet.
Quarry Bushes for me are bonsai chestnut trees.
Bloated Tuber to me is...well..more bloated, like a Puffball mushroom with a hollow stem..hence the "tube".
Whip vines i percept as a kind of very long, unbloomed chives. Which, come to think of it, would make a horrible whine, so i imagine its taste much more like sweet lemon grass.

It might be that I as a non-native speaker perceive the sound and meaning of those names differently...

[joeclark77]

First thought... why is the sweet pod depicted as a mushroom?  And why is it so "plump" while the plump helmet is so skinny?  Obviously sweet pods should be some sort of plant with pods on it, no?

Same thing comes to mind in the second row.  Why is the  muck root so "bloated" and the bloated tuber such a skinny root?

Finally, to answer your question, I always pictured "rope reed" as being hemp, that is, marijuana.

[MattStriker]

It might be that I as a non-native speaker perceive the sound and meaning of those names differently...

Could very well be: 'Tuber' has nothing to do with tubes, it means 'Knolle'.

[joeclark77]

It might be that I as a non-native speaker perceive the sound and meaning of those names differently...

Could very well be: 'Tuber' has nothing to do with tubes, it means 'Knolle'.

In english a tuber is a plant like a potato or sweet potato, that grows underground.

[Dorftrottel]

Thanks for the education! I must have fallen to a false friend here, with "röhre"= german for "tube" and "Röhrling" being the german name for a kind of mushroom.
As sweet potatoes are often huge, I can imagine them as a real life equivalent of bloated tubers. They are also really delicious if done right, it makes me kind of want to open a "cook something dwarfish" thread right away...

[WealthyRadish]

Tunnel tubes. Magenta pillars of woody goodness, or rubbery dildo? Some questions are best left unanswered.

[Bumber]

I think dimple cups look more like a blue one of these:

Hence the "cup".

Longland grass I imagine to look exactly like wheat.

[GuesssWho]

What are those?

I see pigtails as being REALLY curly, and whip vines as being tall and thin and droopy.

[Larix]

I imagine only plump helmet and dimple cup as mushrooms (only those have 'spawn', not seeds); mushrooms are usually extremely low in carbohydrates, which makes them not very likely as candidates for sugar, flour and textile fibres, not even to mention alcoholic beverages. I picture the non-mushroom underground crops as pale plants mostly; sweet pods as something like peas. And yeah, dimple "cups" sound like they have cup-shaped fruiting bodies, like this one, only in blue, of course.

Longland grass for me is Spelt, although Einkorn or a wild/low-yield type of barley would also work. I've no clear idea of blade weed and hide root - they might both be annual herbaceous plants, the names just denote the parts used to extract dye.
Rope reed suggests nothing more fancy than a kind of reed; mundanely, one of the long-stalked types used for thatching, but maybe something more flashy like papyrus. That's why herbalists only find them close to water.

[MattStriker]

mushrooms are usually extremely low in carbohydrates,

Yes...and no. Chitin (which fungal cell walls are made of) is technically a modified sugar, and with the right enzymes it ferments quite nicely. So you could brew alcohol from fungi, you just couldn't do it with regular yeast.

Fungal textiles might be an option too...pure chitin is sort of leathery, and while no fungus on earth forms proper fibers from it there's no real reason why an alien 'shroom couldn't.

[Loud Whispers]

Bloated Tuber to me is...well..more bloated, like a Puffball mushroom with a hollow stem..hence the "tube".

Someone's already said it, but tubers are what potatoes use to branch off and make new potatoes. So I imagine much like a Fortress, most of the plant would be underground, growing and branching off into new plant.
In any case I love em all! Hide Root is one I have not really considered, and I imagined pig tails to be more curled like a vine seeking support. And finally! Someone who knows they're sliver barbs! Not silver! SLIVER!

[Larix]

mushrooms are usually extremely low in carbohydrates,

Yes...and no.

Sorry, but i find that the 1-5% found in most (fresh, not dried) edible mushrooms are pretty low, compared to real-world carbohydrate crops like grapes (~15%) potatoes (~20%) and grains (~60%).

So you could brew alcohol from fungi, you just couldn't do it with regular yeast.

Yes, that's why there is such a thing as dwarven wine. If you slightly dried the mushrooms before brewing you might even get over 5% alcohol by volume... I find it easier to imagine dwarfs worked out a brewing process for one mushroom type and assume they found/cultivated/bred non-synthesising plants that can live underground. Those would likely be plants parasiting on fungi in the soil, something which does exist in the real world. There could even be a bit of chemosynthesis mixed in there. Those'd be some pretty weird plants nonetheless (just for fun, make them carnivorous, too and let them use bioluminescence to attract prey).

Fungal textiles might be an option too...pure chitin is sort of leathery, and while no fungus on earth forms proper fibers from it there's no real reason why an alien 'shroom couldn't.

Insects don't produce chitinous fibres, either...
There are the oomycetes, moulds whose cellular walls are made of cellulose, which _is_ known for producing fibres. They're not types which would be at all easy to grow and harvest, though - the most famous one is the potato blight, which would be difficult to grow without, y'know, potatoes or similar hosts.

Thinking of insects (and spiders), what about fungal silk? Silks are made of proteins and mushrooms are biochemically closer to animals than to plants anyway... Not really an option to explain pigtail fibres, but maybe an option for weirding up your crop lists when modding.

[Bumber]

What are those?

Pink burn cup mushrooms. I just did an image search for "cup mushroom".

Some other cup mushrooms:

Spoiler: Large pics (click to show/hide)

Scarlet elf cups:


Scarlet cups:


Yellow cup fungus:


Orange peel fungus (what Larix linked to):

I suppose the orange peel fungus would best fit the "dimple" description. Mess with the hues and...

Dimple cups:


More dimple cups:

(These ones have decided to glow orange for some reason. This is why we don't let them in sunlight. Next thing you know they start sparkling.)

[Findulidas]

Yuck, It would take some time for me to being used to eating those. Mushrooms always make me cringe for some reason.