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[Nixonitus]

For some reason I see pig tails as cattails only thicker, shorter, and pink...

[Tevish Szat]

Plump Helmets: Fly Amanita mushrooms, but purple.

Spoiler: Like this, actually, but less ceramic (click to show/hide)

Pigtails: Fibrous stalks, white or pail peach, tightly coiled.
Sweet Pod: Sweet pods grow from seeds, not spawn.  I actually like to think they look a bit like stunted corn, with the ruddy, hard "pods" where the ear of corn would be.
Cave Wheat: Like wheat, but albino white.
Quarry Bush: Basil from a Black-and-white world

Spoiler: This Image even had the right shape! (click to show/hide)

Dimple Cup: Bumber's picture is great.

[wierd]

A better choice for plump helmet IMO, is Wood Blewit.

It even contains simple sugars!

For Pigtail, I more see a parasitic or saprotrophic, non-photosynthetic plant. (They DO exist.)  It is clearly a bast-fiber plant, ("Twisty stalks" pref string)-- but that could describe something like this yucca.. or it could be something like this ornamental grass


For sweetpod, I think more like some crazy spin on tamarinds.

It's hard for me to imagine a stable dyestuff (that is blue!) from dimple cup. It is easier for me to contemplate a reactive-dye that TURNS blue coming from dimple cup.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Blue pigments are notoriously poor in terms of lightfastness.  In medieval europe, there were only two. 1) Indigo/woad, and 2)Prussian Blue. There WERE of course, other blue pigments-- but they did not have the wash-fastness nor light fastness of these two pigments, and would fade in just a few washings. Organic dyes in particular are very vulnerable to fading in light, blues especially. Most blue pigments found in plants are anthrocyanin compounds or complexes. Indigotin (indigo blue) is very different, being complex-phase insoluble in water (only the indoxyl monomer is soluble), a small atomic weight, and having a very sturdy molecular structure with a sturdy double bond. I could see DimpleCup producing Indigotin, it being an organic aromatic, with a truncated second ring and hydrogenated nitrogen. It's synthesis from the digestion of plant matter in a fungus seems reasonable, assuming sufficient nitrogen is present. However, this means that most of the dye in the fungus will NOT be blue while it is still alive, just like with indigo and woad.  As such, I would not depict dimple cups as being blue, or, if shown partially oxidized, would only have a faint blue outer hue in the outer layers of tissue. It would instead stain hands, clothes, and utensils used to mash up the fruit bodies, as the colorless indoxyl reacts with atmospheric oxygen, and forms the indigotin complex. As such, I see Dimple Cup as being white, or white with a pinkish or blueish cast. Not as midnight blue.)

[Mushroo]

Nice thread, slowpokez!

I personally imagine sweet pods as something like a sugar beet. (In which case "pod" would be a misnomer.)

[Eric Blank]

I, too, doodled a do.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I find it perfectly reasonable that plump helmets would be an average mushroom which develops a very succulent bloom in order to generate and spread it's spore, as well as for storage of food and water, where the fungus is incapable of digging into the rocky cavern floor.
Pig tails use rigid spiral structures to elevate their spores above the cavern muck. The sticky spores exist on the outside of the fungus' cap, where they hopefully rub off on passing animals, spreading them quite a ways. The stalks grow in the way they do so that the fungus is not crushed by the animal, and I actually imagine them as looking more like a hemispherical brain coral, composed of a great multitude of these stocks twisted together. The stalks are fibrous and make good cloth. I just suck at MSpaint and spiral patterns.
Cave wheat elevates it's tiny spore caps on very thin, wispy stalks, making it look like a field of surface grass. The incredibly small, hard spores spread by being ingested by animal life.
Sweet pods, like cave wheat, spread their spores via elevated stalks, but instead of developing a vast quantity of cheap spores, they develop a few high-potency offspring which grow in a ring around the bulbous pod at the end. The pod, as I depicted it, is actually a hollow cavity wherein a colony of bacteria is grown in symbiosis with the fungus; the fungus provides nutrients and an immune system to deal with threats to it's bacterial colony, which develops mostly in the base of the fungus, whilst the colony produces a huge quantity of simple sugars, which animals love, and are bright red-gold bio-luminescent organisms, which, thanks to thin membranes on the exterior of the pods, are highly visible to any animal which still has eyes, which I wager makes a good incentive for animals in the underdark of dwarf fortress to still have functioning eyes where earthly organisms in caves often lose them; bio-luminescent bacterial colonies and fungi that break down decaying organic matter and process mineral resources provide a basis of the food chain, and organisms that can still see them, and thus quickly locate and ingest them, are more successful than organisms which cannot, so animals like elk birds, dralthas, and rutherers use their eyes to locate these food sources. In my image, the sweet pod is developing a second stalk, which when ripe will begin to fill with bacteria, producing sugar and glowing brightly.
Quarry bushes are a fungi which spread best via their creeping vines, which form nice bushy thickets, the roots penetrating rocks to allow them to make the most of every surface of the caverns. The "leaves" are starchy, long-term storage vessels.
Dimple cups are small, toxic fungi that grow low on the cavern floor.

Cavern moss and floor fungi would probably be all manner of other, much smaller bacteria and fungi which develop throughout the caverns.

[Randy Gnoman]

I am also doodling!

Spoiler:  Randy's Almanac, Dwarven crops (click to show/hide)

I'm seeing sweet pods as being tough, sugary pods which encase some large, hard seeds.  There can't very much flesh, or the could be eaten raw.

Before today, I always visualized cave wheat as simply being albino wheat- but I gave 'em a rethink and decided they should look more like other plants that parisitize fungi, so there they are!

My pig tails are not as curly as some of those presented here:  but then, neither is a pig's tail!  I just picture them as being very tough, fibrous plants, whose fibers have a good staple length (which does not necessarily require a very long stalk).

[Joemit]

I always think of sweet pods as some sort of bean-like plant, but sweet. Quarry bushes I think of as some sort of bush with edible leaves and plump helmets as some sort of fat purple carrot.

[slowpokez]

Lol, I was just gonna reply to this thread when I realised that I made it. Somehow I got absolutly no memory of making this... I can faintly recall doing the picture but I dunno

Nice thread, slowpokez!
I personally imagine sweet pods as something like a sugar beet. (In which case "pod" would be a misnomer.)

This part had me kinda confused

[omnomosaurus]

I thought I'd have a crack at it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's a Plump helmet btw

[Bumber]

Got around to drawing the first of the crops:

You'll notice the extensive root system of the plump helmet that allows them to take over.

I decided that pig tails grow as upright twirly vines and are related to the Luffa. Fibers are extracted from both the vines and the fruit (when dried.)

Cave wheat is what you would expect.

Sweet pods are related to Honey mesquite, but don't grow to full tree size (they're like dwarves.)

Quarry bush is related to the peanut, but has better tasting leaves like basil.

Dimple cups are related to Orange peel fungus.

All underground plants rely on symbiotic bacteria or something in place of photosynthesis.

[omnomosaurus]

Wow you really did your homework.

[Bumber]

Managed to finish up the rest of the plants after working on them for 6 hours straight. Also added some stuff to the first set (roots, pigtails now has dried fruit.)



After dimple cups is muck root. Based it off marshmallow.

Next is bloated tuber. Basically a massive potato.

Kobold bulb looks kind of like an onion.

Prickle berries, wild strawberries, and longland grass look how you might expect. (Briefly considered making prickle berries like blackberries, which happen to have prickly thorns on their stems.)

Valley herb is cannabis (marijuana.) Was going to use myrrh for its medicinal and religious significance, but that's a tree, and it wouldn't be feasible to take the whole thing back to the farmer's workshop to extract the sap. Cannabis is medicinal enough, I suppose.

For rat weed I used western ragweed. The words are about the same, and Native Americans used it for medicine so it might be (barely) edible.

I decided to make fisher berries an aggregate fruit (like blackberries) for variety's sake, since I didn't do it for prickle berries.

Rope reed is just the common reed.

Blade weed is Cyperus tetraphyllus Snake plant or a Bromelia (these work better.) I considered aloe vera, but that's not likely to make a green dye (the gel inside the leaf is clear.)

I based hide root on redroot (Lachnanthes caroliniana,) although the roots on that plant are naturally red, unlike unprocessed hide root.

I made sliver barb look like barbed wire for kicks. My original idea had more barbs and they only faced forward.

Sun berries look like bright yellow blueberries.

Whip vine looks like a vine that looks like a whip.

[MasterMorality]

Not a strange tendency. In my eyes, it is the only way to play.

[Babylon]

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.

sweet pods are grown underground, so I always assumed they were some sort of mushroom.

[slowpokez]

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.

sweet pods are grown underground, so I always assumed they were some sort of mushroom.

Same here, guess I never gave it much thought because everyone always draws them as red mushrooms.