#fictional plants

Mandragora officinarum - Gemeine Alraune

AKA how can I make this into a scientific study?

AKA how can I badly write a scientific report on an infamous fictional disease?

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Hanahaki Disease is a fictional disease that is characterized by the growth of flowers in the body that was normally caused by one-sided love or unrequited love.

The growth of flowers can be found in heart, lungs and/or throat. The primary symptom is coughing or vomiting up flower petals, which progresses into full blooms as the condition worsens.

It’s curable through one of two methods.

The first and most common cure is the reciprocation of romantic feelings by the object of the afflicted person's affection. Upon mutual love being established, the flowers disappear, and the symptoms resolve immediately.

The second method involves surgical removal of the flowers, which allows the sufferer to survive but at the cost of losing their romantic feelings for the beloved.

If neither cure occurs, the disease is typically fatal, progressing until the character suffocates on the flowers.

…of course that’s the most of the information regarding this fictional disease.

But, what if Hanahaki Disease isn’t what you thought it was? What if it is different?

Since Hanahaki word is a portmanteau derived from Japanese words hana (花), meaning flower, and hakimasu (吐きます), meaning to vomit or to throw up.

So I’m going to take it and make it realistic as possible.

Hanahaki disease is a disease like many other diseases. To understand the disease, you must to know how to diagnosis the type of disease.

Disease can be categorized by infectious or non-infectious. Sometimes it can be classified via communicable vs non-communicable or acute vs chronic. And by body systems or its causes.

Infectious disease is caused by pathogens (viruses, bacteria, fungi, parasites) while non-infectious diseases are often caused by genetics, environmental or behaviors.

Genetic/Hereditary diseases are often passed through genes of one (or both) parent. While Deficiency Diseases are caused by lack of specific nutrients and Autoimmune Diseases are happening when its body’s immune system is attacking on itself.

Communicable is an another word for contagious so whether if it can be spread from person to person or animal to person. Non-communicable is the opposite of communicable.

Acute is for short term while Chronic is for long term.

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Looking over at the summary of the necessary information for the types of disease, I can conclude that:

Hanahaki Disease is a chronic infectious disease. Luckily, it is noncontagious so it can’t be passed around.

In the categories of the areas where it affects the most, it fell in cardiovascular(related to heart and blood vessels) category and respiratory(related to nose, mouth, throat, lungs) category. Not that surprising since the heart and the lungs are deeply interconnected.

So, what kind of pathogens that is linked to Hanahaki disease? A parasitic virus! Or rather, a parasitic plant.

This parasitic plant can be found anywhere but its origin is from Japan. The scientific name of this parasitic plant is Mimikkufurawā(ミミックフラワー) or Kopīfurawā(コピーフラワー), which roughly translates to Mimic Flower/Copy Flower. The name that everyone uses is Kopihana plants, they sometimes use ‘Kopi plant’ or ‘Hana plant’ as a reference to this particular parasitic plant.

Kopihana is also derived from ‘Kopī’(コピーフラワー) which means ‘copy’ in Japanese and ‘Hana’(花) which means ‘flower’ in Japanese.

This Kopi plant is capable of copying other flower/plant’s appearance and colors. It also grow the fruit that emits the sweet scent in order to lure the prey to eat the plant/fruit.

The Kopi plant’s original appearance is a red flower(M) with seven petals in three rows curled inward or a pink flower(F) with eight petals in three rows curled outward.

The Kopi Fruit appearance is an oval shaped fruit that is colored green but as time went by and when it is ripen, the fruit would be red(M)or pink(F). It tastes very sweet.

Beware! Do not digest the seeds, because in the seed is the holoparasite called Hanahaki parasite.

Hanahaki parasite would latched onto your throat, into your lungs, or into your heart and implanted the seed into the muscle.

As time went by, the seed would grew the roots into the muscles and begin to suck the nutrients from your body. Which it would causes the seed to grow into a plant/flower. It also causes the brain to release more oxytocin and dopamine chemicals.

The victim of Hanahaki parasite would feel like there is something lodged inside his/her throat or their lungs, which often cause the coughing fits that lasts for days or weeks. The victim could vomit from the sensation as well.

Then the victim would get the common fever symptoms. The coughing symptoms would persist. During that time, the victim’s brain would produce more oxytocin and dopamine chemicals.

Whether if the fever symptoms goes away or not, the victim will start to coughing up the flower petals. The coughing symptoms will worsen when they start to coughing up flower petals. At that time, the Hanahaki parasite will begin to eat the muscles away.

That will lead to the victim to coughing/vomiting the blood along the flower petals.

When the Kopi seed starts to grow into a sprout, the Hanahaki parasite will force the victim’s brain to produce more oxytocin and dopamine chemicals(sometimes it will causes the brain to produce serotonin chemicals as well) to feed the sprout more.

By that point, the victim’s body is in a critical state. Eventually, the victim will die from suffocation, whether by the flower or the blood.

I made a digital version, because the paper version didn't look very good.

They may occasionally appear hiding their "stem" under the ground with only the flower within view.

They usually appear to stand upright until disturbed by external stimuli. Basic things such as being touched, hurt, stepped on, etc.

This will prompt them to "awaken." Their bodies will begin to turn and move idly if they haven't already been provoked (attacked).

The flesh used is not just of humans, but of villagers as well.

@billiebustupofficial @bbu-fan-blog

Hey there,

So you want to make up some plants and don’t know how to? There are several starting options you can pick from. For one, you can look at the climate of your world that they live in and work your way up to A Look, by deciding how the plant adapted to it and why it can thrive in a place like this.

For example, desert plants have adapted to have the smallest possible surface area and best water-storing capabilities. And those that live in shadowy climates either find a way towards the light or develop massive foliage to maximise their intake. (Shadowy, however, does not mean cold, tropical jungles are shadowy bc the treetops shield everything beneath from the sun, and it is in fact very, very hot there, which is why orchids prefer warm climates but cannot for their live handle direct sunshine). Here on earth, the primary deciding factors for how a plant develops are the sun, shadow, light, rain/water and their access to them. Not all of them come in equal measures for every plant so they all have different preferences. You can, of course, apply the same general rules to your planet, you can also, make things up as you please.

The other way would be the other way around, you’d start with figuring out how you want the plant to look and go from there, try and decide what sort of climate it should live in.

But your world won’t just need pretty flowers, greenery and trees (or something akin to those), you will also need food! And spices! And potentially dangerous plants and actually poisonous ones. (Here on earth poisonous does not equal deadly, it can mean that but a lot of times it just means the plant has a terrible time in store for whoever eats or touches them).

To figure out what exactly these things are in your story you can use either of the previous options, or you can take inspiration from what already exists and re-invent it or have it be just… slightly off. What’s important though is the question whether it can be eaten and if it’s a household staple and whether people would grow it as a crop. However, things that people like to eat, weren’t necessarily intended to be consumed by Mother Nature. For example coffee or chilli.

Are there plants that people put in their homes as cut flowers or in pots? Are there recreational plants? If you go by purpose, you don’t necessarily have to reinvent the wheel and come up with a whole new dictionary of plant classifications. 

But! Since you want to throw in some scientific-sounding names you could use Latin, but of course, any language of your choosing works, but the easiest way, however, would be to go for something descriptive regarding the plants' appearance, or growing conditions or discovery or size. That’s pretty much how people are already doing it. In a pinch, a group word like Cultivar(s) helps, which in this case is used for plants that have been cross-bred so much that there’s no identifying anymore what they’re made of. Sometimes it’s written with an S at the end to denote that the number of related types if impossibly large really, nobody could tell them apart anymore. (Tulips are Cultivars, and so are Dahlias, we just… don’t know anymore.)

Plant names generally consist of a genus and a species (and possibly a subspecies), these are grouped under a family, possibly a sub-family. The complete order is a bit longer, but here you go: Kingdom → Clade (repeat till there are no more) → Family → Sub-Family → Genus → Species → Sub-Species. If you want to fill the whole list, by all means, knock yourself out, but generally knowing family, genus and species are more than enough for the average character to classify a plant. You can also make up your own set of categories and omit or add whatever you like. Since your planet isn’t earth there really is no need to stick to the rules all the way.

Considering that we don’t know any other planets with plant life (that we know off), you can’t really break reality here, unless you play exclusively by earth rules, the rules are already broken. The most important thing in my book would be for you to make the readers believe. Make whatever you’re explaining to them reasonable in their mind and don’t let them know you may have just made it up on the spot. Make them buy it. You can establish everything you want because it’s your story with your planet and your fictional plants.

Aesthetics, unfortunately, is something high subjective, so there is no one-size-fits-all answer here. The best way to go about this might be to figure out what the people who inhabit that planet consider pretty and whether it fits the Earth Standard or not, and if not how it deviates.

– Mod Jana

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