#leafwing theory

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*gasp* an emoji annon for me!

Thank you so much! WoF is like, my favorite thing ever, I've got lots of thoughts

So Shrimpy (do tell if you'd like a different nickname) lemme tell you my thoughts about LeafWing genetics that I've been meaning to make a post about

So I think that LeafWing genetics are particularly strong in hybrids.

So we know that for the most part, the mother's genetics are dominant. All but one of any stealth hybrids look like the mother's tribe. Sunny is SandWing passing, Darkstalker NightWing passing, etc.

All except for Snakeroot, who appears LeafWing, even though his mother is the NightWing. He is described as having a long nose so he has a LeafWing head shape, and there is no note of him having a different scale patterning. (Unlike Sunny, who in the cover of her book can be seen with a NightWing scale pattern.) So Snakeroot is a stealth hybrid of the father's tribe, and this is the only incident of this happening- I even scrolled the fandom wiki page for WoF hybrids and clicked on everyone to be sure, he's the only one this happens with. And through Snakeroot, Mulberry is a tribrid who appears only to be from two tribes.

Now we don't know much about hybrid genetics when it comes to dragons of more than two tribes, because Mulberry is the only tribrid we see a lot of. There's only one other named tribrid to my knowledge. That being Raspberry, a member of the King's Claws who gets exactly one sentence of description from Umber: "HiveWing-LeafWing-RainWing hybrid, color changing scales except for permanently dark pink wings," since he's a side character, we don't know anything about his wing type, scale pattern, horn shape, or head shape- so he doesn't really tell us much about hybrid genetics. Though I'd say it's implied that Raspberry has either LeafWing or HiveWing shaped wings, given the way RainWing scale changing in hybrids is shown to work. Anyway that's all to say that Mulberry is the only tribrid who gives us anything to work with, and he's a special case by himself so it gets a little weird.

So anyway the LeafWing genes in Mulberry are double recessive being not only from the father's side but from the grandfather's side. And while he's got a more SkyWing head with the nose horn, the patterning on the horns, and a bit with the face scales, as well as of course his coloration and that he's got a more SkyWing wingspan, he is very LeafWing with no visible NightWing. He has LeafWing scale patterning, a LeafWing horn shape, of course the wing shape and the tail leaf. But, like Snakeroot, no visible NightWing traits.

Mulberry and certainly Snakeroot should have some sort of visible NightWing trait for the NightWing genes being maternal (/grand-maternal), but all there really is is that Snakeroot has very dark scales. Of course theres Mulberry's dragonspeak and I've got thoughts about Snakeroot having powers but that's a whole nother essay.

There's also the fact that Clearsight saw a future where she had dragonets with at least one LeafWing, and she had a lot of partners, but there was no split in that tribe as there was with the BeetleWings. Now I've got another four interconnected theories on BeetleWings and their genetics but that's another post.

So the known LeafWing hybrids appear LeafWing dominant, even LeafWing passing in Snakeroot's case, even though they should appear more like the mother's tribe.