Nathan Xavier
October 24, 2020 7:20 PM
Intermediate Herbology: Alocasia Volant by Nathan Xavier
Nathan stood before Greenhouse One. Well, 'stood' was perhaps a generous description. In truth, he more leaned against it than stood beside it. The day was hot. Inside the greenhouse, it was even hotter, and he'd just taught a two hour lesson for the beginners in there and then had to stick around afterwards to tidy up between lessons. Being outside was a relief, but not enough of one.It was very nearly the last class period of the day, and as much as he loved teaching and loved his students, he didn't really want to be here right now. His bed was a rather nicer alternative, he thought. His living quarters were charmed to be pleasantly comfortable and a nap would be lovely. Or maybe a beach might be nice; the one in Maine where he'd proposed to Isis would be just about perfect. Or he'd settle for the artic circle, if he had to. That would be a welcome change of pace for a little while anyway.
As he spotted the first of the intermediates approaching, he attempted to do more standing and less leaning, but didn't quite manage to pull himself away from the doorframe entirely. "You don't need to go in yet," he advised, not moving to allow them entrance. "If you think it's hot out here, it's worse in there. Robes are not required today." He himself was wearing grey trousers and a short sleeve button up shirt. The only reason it wasn't caked in sweat right now was because he'd cast cleaning and drying charms on it only a few moments ago. Late afternoons where the worst and he did not want to go back in there until dusk at least. Most of the class should remember that robes were rarely required in his class for the first month of school, so hopefully they had dressed appropriately underneath.
Once most of the class had assembled outside, and the time reached that point where dallying any further would be purely procrastination and no longer waiting for the allotted class time, he sighed and waved them in. "Go on in."
It was their second class of the year. For their previous class, they had gone over syllabus for the year, and done some review of important terminology and procedures and safety precautions (which had been particularly important for the new third years because intermediates did cover more dangerous plant life than beginners did), and he'd conducted it outside because they hadn't needed anything inside the greenhouse for that. Today, that was not the case.
He followed last, reluctantly closing the door behind him, not that leaving it open between the classes had done anything to cool the place down. If anything, it had risen a few degrees since he'd escaped. Heat assaulted him immediately and he felt himself sweating again. "Apologies for the temperature and humidity," he said, "but today we start our tropical unit."
He trusted they would remember all the layers of the rainforest from when they covered that in beginners, so he jumped right to the first specimen. The large worktable that ran down the center of the greenhouse today had what could best be described as a long sand box on top of it today. Wooden boards were nailed together into rectangles that filled much of the table area but gave each student just enough room in front of their stools to place a piece of parchment if they wanted to take notes. Inside the boards, dark loamy dirt had filled in the space, and every foot or so a trio of broad leaves rose from a single point in the soil. They were not entirely evenly spread, but there was a clear distinction between each individual plant.
"In front of each of you, you will see a large leafed plant." By tropical rainforest standards, the plants were still fairly small, each one being only between three and eight inches tall, but they were by no means fully grown yet. "Don't touch it," he said, a bit more sharply than he'd intended to when he spotted one student getting too close to theirs. It wasn't dangerous, exactly, but . . . well, he didn't want to spoil this plant's surprise too soon.
They were a vibrant green, and the leaves fluttered slightly in the air, despite there not really being any sort of breeze in the heavy humidity of the greenhouse.
"These plants are from the alocasia family, and they are cousins to a common garden feature you may know as Elephant Ears. They grow on the forest floor of tropical rainforests, and on a fully mature plant, the leaves can reach a height of almost ten feet, though most don't grown much larger than two. These, obviously, are still very young. However, being young does give them an advantage. These are a magical tropical plant, and what makes them magical is this defense mechanism." With that, he reached toward one of the plant and touched one of the leaves. The leaves began spinning like a helicopter and it flew up into the air, its root dangling beneath it. It came down into an clear spot a few feet further along the trough, and rooted itself back into the dirt.
"Like other Alocasia species, this plant is toxic to humans, so wash your hands if you touch it." He cast a cleaning spell on his hand that had touched the leaf. Then he cast another one on his shirt because even he could tell he was smelling sweaty again.
"This ability stays with them into adulthood, however, the larger they grow, the shorter the distance they can fly. However, a ten foot tall plant spinning around and jumping out the dirt, even if by only a few centimeters, is often plenty good enough to scare off whatever was trying to nibble on it. Unlike other Alocasia plants, these can be identified by only ever having three leaves at a time, though they can grow a new one to replace a damaged one. Are there any question?" He waited for and addressed any that were offered. "All right, take a few minutes to observe the plant. You may touch it, if you like, just wash your hands afterward. It's mostly harmless other than its toxicity if ingested, but it can cause papercuts if a spinning leaf edge catches you just wrong, so gloves are not an unreasonable precaution. Take notes on its appearance and behavior. See if you can notice a difference between how far the smallest ones can fly and how far the largest ones here can go. You may talk amongst yourselves while you do this. Once you've had a chance to interact with them a little while, I suggest we all head outside for the rest of my lecture about how to take care of these guys." He pulled out a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and mopped his sweaty forehead. "Go ahead, you've got about ten minutes."
OOC: This plant is completely made up and is inspired by bugs that look like leaves. I flipped it around and made it leaves that could fly. The plant looks something like this:
References: The Spruce and Amazon
Subthreads: This is ridiculous by Martin Crosby V with Theo Spurn
I totally belong here. No big deal. by Alexander Pierce-Beales with Sadie-Lake Chalmers
Great...Jumping...Elephant Ears? by Morgan Garrett with Leonor De Matteo
This is...almost really cool. by Dathan Fischer with Ellie Alperton
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Nathan Xavier
Intermediate Herbology: Alocasia Volant
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Morgan Garrett
November 12, 2020 10:58 AM
Great...Jumping...Elephant Ears? by Morgan Garrett
Morgan had had her hair down when she had left her dormitory, because she thought it looked better this way, but she had kept a hair tie in her bag just in case. Within seconds of entering the greenhouse, she had grabbed the nearest seat and started rummaging through her bag for said tie, sweeping her hair up into a ponytail without a second thought for how it did or did not look next to her round face. It was hot as anything in here, and there were certain occasions when even a real lady wouldn’t worry too much about form over function. Steaming-hot rooms where they often had to use manure were the sorts of places that caused such occasions. Tropical unit? She’d always thought going to the tropics was supposed to be a pleasant thing to do!One by one, she thought mournfully, illusions just had to fall. Plus, since when were elephant ears magical plants? They had those in the yard back in Kentucky!
The question was answered a moment later – that the elephant ears at home were not magic, specifically because, unlike these, they could not fly. Morgan jumped when the one Professor Xavier touched took to the air, emitting a slight but distinctly silly squeak of surprise. She should, she knew, have not been too fazed by flying plants – they saw weirder all the time – but she had just not been expecting something that looked like something she knew to act like that. Keeping up with these was probably a pain in the rear for whoever it was who actually made sure the Statute of Secrecy was kept, she reckoned….
…unless it poisoned everyone who fooled with it, but she didn’t reckon many people were going to chomp down on a regular elelphant’s ear, never mind a flying one. At least, Morgan could not imagine that her response to something in the yard doing something it was not supposed to do would be to try to bite it, and she thought she had a lot more imagination than most of her family did, or most of Industry, Kentucky in general. In some respects, it was better to be like everyone else, and biting plants that could react didn’t seem like a great idea even if one didn’t know they were poison. It could jump hard enough to yank itself out of the ground and come down hard enough to go back in the ground. If you bit it, it might pull hard enough to take a tooth or two as it got away. That would kind of suck, even before they got to the poison bit.
She examined her hands when Professor Xavier said the thing could cause papercuts, and that such a small cut could still be enough to cause trouble. She didn’t think she had anything like that, or any breaks on the skin of her hands, and she was kind of curious about what the fake elephant ears felt like, but….
Ah, the heck with it. She was pretty sure that if it could really hurt them, they wouldn’t have it in class – not for third years, anyway – and Professor Xavier had just cast a charm and that had been that. Plus, she wasn’t sure she had remembered her gloves; she was bad about that sometimes. She reached out and tried to press the tips of her fingers to a broad leaf – ‘tried’ being the operative term, as she had hardly grazed it when it leapt into the air and she automatically leapt backward, nearly colliding with someone else in the process.
“Oh, gosh, sorry,” she said, her voice still even more heavily accented than usual in the second class of the year. She had spent the last few weeks of summer in Kentucky this year, and had not been around other people long enough to start unconsciously speaking more ‘proper-like,’ as she called it in her head, on the rare occasions she thought about it that much. “These are som’thin’ else, aren’t they?”
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Morgan Garrett
Great...Jumping...Elephant Ears?
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Leonor De Matteo
November 22, 2020 5:25 PM
What is that nonsense? by Leonor De Matteo
Leonor didn't, on her own, actually hate Herbology. It was in the blood of a De Matteo to have at least a minimal interest in flora and agriculture and the like. She also generally preferred the heat of the greenhouses to the perpetual chill of the rest of Sonora. However, she did hate humidity like this, and she did hate being in Felipe's classes, and she did hate being in Felipe's favorite class with him in it, and she did hate getting dirty. It was sort of nice that she was in classes with Jeremy now, but it wasn't as if they were about to go prancing around campus holding hands, and kissing was only somewhat appealing these days. Plus, they weren't going to makeout in the greenhouse anyway, so what was the point? The best they could do here was chat, and even that was a bit more clingy than either of them usually went in for.Today's lesson did have the added interest of being dangerous, so she supposed that was good, even if dangerous also usually went hand-in-hand with dirty in this class. It also required people spread out enough that she probably wouldn't have to overhear Felipe talking with his stupid girlfriend or something, which was great. However, she was nearly collided with by another stupid person and she turned to find that it was Morgan. Great. The girl who couldn't tell coral from red. Her immediate groveling did help Lorena solve one mystery though: Morgan's accent was vaguely similar to Billy's. So that's why he sounded funny. At least this one could string together a sentence the right way.
"Yes," Leonor said. "They're something else. I suppose we should work together now?"
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Leonor De Matteo
What is that nonsense?
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Morgan Garrett
November 27, 2020 11:59 AM
It's some jumping elephant ears. by Morgan Garrett
Morgan’s grin had begun to fade almost as soon as it had come, her mouth finishing her remark more by reflex than in accordance with her thoughts. In her head, there was, abruptly, only one thought: oh, no.She had only really had one proper conversation with Leonor De Matteo in their three years at school, but it had been the sort of single conversation to make an impression. The impression was a swirl of unhappy feelings which consolidated themselves into the concept that Leonor was the sort of person around whom Morgan found her accent invariably thickening, all while she couldn’t decide whether this was a person she should die before she ever said ‘ain’t’ in front of, or if this was a person she should very carefully say ‘ain’t’ in front of, just to be defiant, or possibly annoy Leonor, or…something.
“I – I reckon?” she said, wishing it didn’t sound so much like a question, and that she had not said the word ‘reckon.’
She tried to think as rapidly as possible. Work together? They had been told they could talk during the ten-minute observation period, but she could recall no specific task for them to do besides taking notes, much less a task that required working together. Had she missed something? She knew well enough that she didn’t always pay enough attention in class, or pick up on the subtleties of what people said, but she usually caught onto stuff as big as the task of the day….
“Guess we can observe two at once that way,” she said, trying to imitate the sort of assurance about what she said that she associated with Mara, and the casual indifference to other people’s opinions that she admired in Josie. “We’gn’ get more done at one time like that. I guess we can try havin’ a big one and a littler one jump at the same time, so we can compare ‘em?”
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Morgan Garrett
It's some jumping elephant ears.
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Leonor De Matteo
November 29, 2020 5:09 PM
Isn't that a food? by Leonor De Matteo
OOC: CW: Leonor thinks poorly of people she doesn't view as speaking properly, and she is being mean and crappy about it. Morgan speaks just fine. BIC:
Leonor had been trying to be nice. They were stuck talking to each other now and professors liked the whole interaction thing most of the time, so it seemed like offering to work together would be more polite than just bailing out of the conversation, or else trying to pretend either of them was interested in small talk. But no. Instead, Morgan accepted the offer of working together and then suggested they work independently. Why not just say no, Morgan? Ugh.
She supposed, since an effort was being made to at least put on appearances of almost working together, that it would be best to accept the offer at this point. Besides, wouldn't it be just riveting to see a 'littler' one jump? Ugh. How come Leonor had spent so many years working on her own English only to come to school and find out that some people couldn't even be bothered to speak one language correctly, let alone bother with more than one? It wasn't the first time she thought that she'd have been better off at one of the more elite institutes for magical learning, but at least there were people like the Mordues and Brockerts here, so she knew she wasn't the only one who far outstripped most of her classmates.
Pausing long enough to blink disdainfully at her classmate, Leonor finally answered. "Sure," she decided. "You can do the smaller one," she said, emphasizing her words without making any effort to conceal the fact that she was talking down to Morgan some. "I should probably be the note taker for the group then?" she added, raising an eyebrow.
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Leonor De Matteo
Isn't that a food?
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Morgan Garrett
December 15, 2020 7:45 PM
Ornamental plant, actually. by Morgan Garrett
Morgan was not a person with a particularly well-developed sense for the subtleties of expressions and body language, but something about the look Leonor gave her struck her as…off. There was something about it that she felt must be a sign that she had done something wrong, but what it could be, she didn’t know, all she had said was….Oh.
If all Leonor had said was ‘smallest,’ Morgan wouldn’t have noticed the criticism, but the tone was openly condescending. That made that one word the thing that made the problem obvious. She had said it wrong. Like some inbred hick from Bum-nothing, Kentucky…She flushed deep red.
She wanted to lash out. To tell Leonor to go shove her head where the sun didn’t shine and to do her own work. If she did that, though, then she would give Leonor what she wanted, plus she would make herself look like a crazy person. Plus plus, she knew that when she got angry, if she started yelling, her accent would thicken like some bad peanut butter and just make the problem that much worse.
“Might be easier to tell how close they end up if we put a couple side by side and we both poke one at once,” she said stiffly. “Unless you’ve got a tape measure in your pocket, anyway.”
She could not control her complexion, but she tried to act as though she hadn’t noticed Leonor’s tone. This would probably just make Leonor think even less of her intelligence, but at least it wouldn’t give Leonor a motive to poke her with the issue whenever she was bored and wanted a reaction. She knew this. It had not taken her very many trips north, after she’d met her father and stepmother, to come to know this.
Sage said that she shouldn’t listen to stuff like that. She had learned to talk by listening to the people around her talking, just like everyone else did. Since everyone learned to talk that way, the only thing the way she talked meant was that she’d grown up around people who talked like that. Intelligence, her stepmother said, was a completely different thing that had nothing to do with the way she pronounced words, or even the grammatical structures she put those words into.
Dad – who, most of the time, barely sounded like he was from Kentucky at all; if she listened closely, or heard him talking right after Sage said something, then she could just discern a kindness to vowels that was like home folks, and that he said individual words more slowly than Sage did, with fractionally longer pauses, but she usually had to try – had just patted her shoulder and said just think about makin’ - he did drop final consonants sometimes, too - those movies, and then you’ll have enough money to drive down every street in this city in a limo with a middle finger painted on every window.
He had sort of half-smiled – as if to encourage her, she thought, rather than in amusement at his own joke – when he said that last part, she remembered. That had been one of the first time she had felt really fond of the actual person who had abruptly sort of drifted into her life about eight years late, instead of just the idea her late aunt had built up for her. It seemed a bit too pat to be true, but she still thought that it might have also been one of the first times he’d also felt fond of her, the then half-toothless reminder of the existences of her mother and of Industry, Kentucky which had been abruptly dropped into his life to deal with.
“But you do what you want,” she added loftily, turning to select some good plants for the experiment. This allowed her back to be to Leonor as she cheered herself up imagining Leonor’s face in a scenario where she happened to be standing on a street which Morgan drove past in a very, very impolite limousine.
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Morgan Garrett
Ornamental plant, actually.
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