#betula

Plant of the Day

Friday 16 January 2026

In the recently planted winter garden at the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew, London, the white stems of Betula utilis subsp. jacquemontii 'Doorenbos' (Himalayan birch) contrast against a path side planting of the fern Polypodium vulgare (common polypody) and a groundcover of Ophiopogon planiscapus 'Kokuryū' (mondo grass, black mondo).

SO I SAID EARLIER I THINK I NEED TO REWRITE EVERYTHING BUT I THINK I FIGURED IT OUT. Mind you this is still being thought out (like most of this story), but I want to give the base idea since it’s extremely important to the world and story, and gives a lot of context.

Possible trigger warning? It kinda talks about some sensitive stuff regarding family

Family is the base of society in Betula. It’s the expectation that people marry, have children and raise polite, compliant family. This comes from how communities operated before cultivation and root whispering was a necessity. Having kids wasn’t just for another generation, it was for strengthen root whispering as younger people had more energy to maintain plants. It was a necessity, and viewed more as that than intimate. What was however was raising children, as they had to make sure they could fully understand root whispering and use it without getting hurt. They taught children to conceal their emotions as a safety measure, because if they were unable to control their energy plants would easily take advantage of it. Calmness was also generally helpful with survival in the forest.

With the introduction of cultivation and villages, root whispering was no longer essential along with the reasoning for most of these practices, especially in villages that left root whispering all together. However they stayed and evolved into an expectation, not for survival but appearance. It became the goal to raise the best behaved family; polite, calm, and quiet. Pressure would be put on kids to grow up quickly and be extremely well behaved and grow up to have kids that became a reflection of themselves. Many families were created less out of love, but more out of pressure and the need to prove oneself. Mind you, each village and family is different, and many are still loving and supportive. But there is this underlying, passive aggressive push in maintaining this tradition.

While many parts of family in Betula are similar to our universe, I want to point out there is a large difference with gender roles. Most aspects of the traditional family, especially in marriage, are based in gender roles that are nonexistent in Betula. Gender is perceived differently and is something I will go much deeper into later, but overall it’s not perceived as important with nothing being assigned to a specific gender.

AO3 Link(You do have to be a registered user to read it there)

Posting date schedule (this can and will change!)

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Content Warnings

Character information:

Fig Ligen (They are the main character, everyone else listed is part of the main cast/plot line)

Jarolend Pyrelyn

Callie Drun

Glorgol Oxcsham

Betula Finsterre

Shendrex Grainlit

Character art:

Fig Ligen

Jarolend Pyrelyn

Callie Drun

Glorgol Oxcsham

Betula Finsterre

Shendrex Grainlit

Setting information:

Divide Codes

Background of the story

Ourskirts

Scrapyards

Actual story:

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Taglist: @duck-in-a-spaceship @cutebisexualmess

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