The Puddlebud Tree

The Puddlebud

The puddlebud is a sunflower tree closely related to the wellwood which can be found across the edges of the interior desert, where grassland gives way to arid scrub. Like the wellwood, its growing stems eventually split open and form into a bowl-like structure, but the puddlebud does so every time a stem flowers, after which it branches below the split and repeats the next time the stems flower so that over many years, it exhibits dozens if not hundreds of small bowls at the ends of its branches, all of which face up to the sky. The process occurs much more quickly in the puddlebud because the puddlebud does so for a different reason; while the wellwood uses its "well" to collect nutrients, the puddlebud, as its name suggests, collects water during intense but very infrequent desert rainstorms, filling each of its miniature wells with rainwater that is quickly absorbed into the stems. Functioning like rain barrels, the puddlebud's many bowls can collect far more water than its roots could alone, and furthermore can store it for longer after the rains stop by secreting a greasy film from glands in its stems which floats on the surface of the puddles and retards evaporation until all of the water can be taken into the plant's tissues, which are pleated and able to swell with many times their weight in water when times are good to hold the tree through long droughts. The system is so efficient that during the seasonal rains, the tree often absorbs as much water as it can and still has a great deal left over in its bowls, which it can then retain by increasing the production of the slimy protective agent until it forms thick curds on the surface of the water so that each of the trees' branches contains a small cup of water sealed under a plug of mucous. When the dry season rolls around and other plants are feeling the strain of drought, the puddlebud is doing just fine while sipping from its stores as needed, and may even be putting out flowers, which open at night and are pollinated by birds and beetles. Its leaves are evergreen and do not shed even in the summer. Instead, they are thick, waxy, and protected from desiccation by a layer of minute hairs, though these lack the irritating sting of their cousins.

The puddlebud becomes a literal oasis in the desert during the height of summer when other water is in short supply. Birds learn quickly to pop a hole in the dried mucous caps of the tree's water-storing cups to access the life-giving liquid, and once they do so, specialized gnat-like flying ants lay their eggs in the cup. Their larvae mature there, feeding on microorganisms and the mucous cap produced by the tree, and may do so even in the height of summer when conditions are at the harshest and driest. It thus becomes its own microcosm of life, a tiny Eden in the desert that allows the survival of animals which could otherwise not remain there for most of the year.

above: a mature puddlebud tree. Each bowl present on the tree was once the site of a flowering stem. When the flower went to seed and died, the stem around it, having lost its terminal bud, developed into the characteristic bowl shape while new leading shoots sprouted from the sides. During the dry season, the bowls will be filled with water, which the plant seals in with a protective mucous cap that prevents it being lost to evaporation.