#dodder

There's a lot of dead yellow plant life but the yellow here looked so intense! And stringy?! So I thought "haha what if it's my favorite plant that I've never seen in person that's be neat but probably not!"

Well it WAS!!!

The tapeworm of wildflowers!!!

Name: Weenus

Series: Robotomy

Gender: Male

Status: Alive

Family: None as of Now

Flower Motif: Dodder (Cuscuta)

Flower Meaning: Mischief

Weapon of Choice: Reverse Grip Shotguns

Associated With: Interdimensional Hero Club (Ally)

Stationed At Which Cafe: Baltimore, ML, USA

Hero Form Appearance: A combination of a student's robotics attire and YuYuYu’s Hero Form outfits. The undersuit of the outfit is a solid gray, which helps serve as a canvas for the lighter colors that is the main outfit. The main outfit is primarily a white hue, and as you make your way towards the part of the sleeves past the elbows, the part of the pants past the knees, and the tailcoat and the collar, it shifts gears to a dark green. The accent colors include black, white, gray, gold, orange, yellow, silver, and hints of blue. The shoes, gloves, and belt all have subtle patterns based on the dodder and the only other accessory is the cluster of bells of Ireland flowers that serve as a brooch on Weenus’ left breast. The flower’s petal shape can be seen in the collar, tailcoat, and sleeves.

Full Bloom Gauge Location: Stomach

Guardian: Brazos (Based on a Brazen Bull)

Favorite Food: Oil!!

Parallel To: None

Plants aren’t… peaceful and harmonious, as a rule. Some are incredibly invasive, some produce compounds that prevent others from growing and developing properly, pumping the soil full of toxins (allelopathy). Cuscuta (a genus with ~200sp, also called dodder, the orange one^) was the first parasitic plant I saw, working outside weeding a giant round-about with an ungodly amount of petunias. Weeding petunias makes your arms all sticky (which I still hate them for). One whole side was carpeted in highlighter-orange vines with no leaves, I had to pull them up in armfuls. I’ve spotted them a few times since, once covering a giant hanging basket of petunias in Missouri.

Haha look at this fucking idiot

Chapter 14 for the @journeythroughjourneytothewest Reading Group! Another nature heavy one! Potential TW: under the cut is a parasitic plant that kind of looks like yellow spiderwebbing or something similar.

Though first a little by the by as I have mentioned before I actually prefer this aspect of the German translation, which translates Xin as heart instead of mind.

Anyway it’s flower symbolism time! Wisterias in Buddhism stand for humility and reflection, which is very fitting for our monkey to be overgrown by under the mountain.

Additionally if we go with the saying ‘somebody has something coming out of his ears’ which means that someone had enough of something, the detail of those flowers growing out of Sun Wukong’s ears is even more fitting. Though I’m not sure if it’s the same in English, but that’s how the saying goes in German.

Wisterias are also very pretty and grow very abundantly which is just a gorgeous sight to behold.

However there is actually some discrepancy found between translations about which plants grow out of his ears and growing on the mountain for that matter.

In the German translation the “creepers and vines” are actually specific plants. The first is called creeping fig or climbing fig (ficus pumila or 薜 bì), which is also the one mentioned in the J.F. Jenner translation.

They can grow to cover entire surfaces too! Like this wall for example.

Dodder or amarbel or how I like to call them ‘forbidden spaghetti’ (cuscuta or 蘿 luó) is the second one.