Airmark's Guide to Planar Vegetables: Shurrock Mercywood
The mobile gender of the Bytopian mercywood tree grows on Shurrock, although it will thrive anywhere it has access to rich soil with adequate drainage; it will even relocate itself to such areas if the immobile gender, dothion mercywood, is found there. Unlike its counterpart, shurrock mercywood is stout and strong, although it has the same metallic silver bark with bronze stretch marks.
Built on roughly a humanoid body plan save for their immense size, shurrock mercywood has adapted to climb mountains and roam far and wide in pursuit of good locations to release its pollen payload in spring. While so doing, they often find themselves at odds with local predators, including several forms of wood-boring beetle and a handful of moths.
Their primary defense mechanism, aside from their great strength, is the incapacitating allergic reaction that their pollen provokes in most living things. Capable of producing far more of the powdery yellow pollen than necessary for reproductive purposes, mercywood often make use of it to halt attackers in their tracks by nonlethal means and make their escape while their would-be attacker chokes.
Mercywood's name is largely indicative of its temperament; provided they demonstrate no hostile intent, shurrock mercywood trees are amenable to rescuing lost explorers, protecting them from wild beasts and natural disaster, and generally being of aid where they can. Rough of temperament and wooden of wit, they are not communicative to those they aid, but their intent is often clear by their exaggerated, slow movements in the presence of smaller creatures.
