Jack Sandrow
Writer, Character, Invasive Species
OUT OF CHARACTER INFORMATION
- Intent: To add plant life that might be used for recreational consumption
- Image Credit: From Wikipedia, by Vojtěch Zavadil - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0
- Canon: N/A
- Permissions: N/A
- Links: [ Based on Banisteriopsis caapi, real life ]
- Name: Kaamarampi yazhe, known colloquially as the 'vertigo vine'
- Origins: Felucia
- Other Locations: Nar Shaddaa, New Cov, Endor, Ithor, etc. Found frequently across green planets.
- Classification: Flowering vine
- Average Growth Cycle: Becomes fully viable after 7-9 months; usually lives 50-80 years.
- Viability: Prefers humid jungle-like environments on planets with Type I atmospheres. Regular sunlight, rainfall, and nutrient intake is important for healthy growth. Commonly found in 'jungle' biomes.
- Description: A flowering woody-barked vine, with broad ovate leaves.
- Average Height: Can grow up to 60 meters off the jungle floor, but usually grows no longer than 40-50 meters in ideal conditions.
- Average Length: Commonly grows as a long, thin vine; the vine trunk itself can grow 40-50 meters long, and about 10-15 cm thick. Leaves can grow 20-30 cm away from the main vine trunk on their own branches.
- Color: Leaves are a rich bright green; vine trunk is a woody dark green bark. Flowers range from white to pink in hue.
- Nutritional Value: None
- Toxicity: Yes; consumption of the vine's bark's byproduct in large quantities (greater than 20mL per kg of body weight) is potentially lethal.
- Other Effects:
- K. yazhe's bark can be decocted to produce a psychoactive byproduct. This byproduct, when consumed, usually induces vomiting within minutes, and shortly after begins to affect the consumer within an hour. Over the next 2 to 6 hours, the person who consumed the drink will commonly experience psychoactive hallucinations and mild euphoria.
- Distinctions: The vine can be visually distinguished from others like it by its trunk - which remains green year-round, no matter the plant's age - as well as the notable aroma of the flowers, often noted as a spicy, pungent, sweet scent.
- In moderate doses (usually no more than 100 mL at a time), the byproduct of K. yazhe's bark can have a purging effect followed by a mild psychoactive and euphoric sensation, for the consumer's benefit.
- Its biological niche and relative ease of harvest make it a rare but simple commodity.
- Its fairly standard niche prevents it from adapting to more extreme climes, and as such it has difficulty surviving outside humid jungle environs.
- Harvesting the byproduct requires killing the plant. It takes approximately an entire plant (60m of vine) to produce 10mL of its byproduct.
The earliest known documented usage of this vine comes from Felucia, where its bark's byproduct was commonly used as a ritualistic drink, to be consumed as part of a yearly 'regeneration cycle'. As the galaxy connected and space travel became the norm, this vine was cultivated and shared across the galaxy, and grew most prominently in jungle biomes that imitated its natural habitat.
Today, the vine is commonly decocted into a psychoactive beverage, consumed recreationally (though very infrequently) by those who seek to cleanse themselves, or those who seek a spiritual awakening, or those who seek both. Due to its strong and (often) personal effects, this byproduct has gained mild notoriety, and as such only a small percentage of people have ever consumed this in their life, and most of those people only once. As such, this vine is not cultivated in great numbers, nor is it commercially sold in any major factor.