The Pineflower Forest

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The boreal forests of Anciska are another biome on Serina which the descendants of sunflowers have readily colonized. Too cold for much of the year for bamboo or its ant symbiotes to thrive, near the tree line the dominant plant type are another branch of sunflower trees. Sharing a common ancestor to the cactus-like survivors of more southerly deserts, tall forests of pineflowers have adapted their hard drought-resistant leaves into thin conifer-like needles, filled with a thick and bitter sap that keeps them from freezing in even the harshest winter weather. Tall and woody trunks rise like columns out of the moss-covered ground here, lead by a single growing tip which regularly puts out whorls of branches that grow outwards to the sides. If the leading shoot is cut off, the plants will grow another - like a true pine tree - though they may never regain their former symmetry. They flower abundantly on the tips of their side branches in the spring, with flowers that have entirely lost their petals; they are pollinated by the wind. The resulting seeds they produce, fatty and nutritious, are formed in corncob-like pods of tightly-packed seeds which many animals have evolved to exploit. Parrot-like finches gnaw them open, smaller birds such as the brilliantly violet-colored Indigo seedeater laboriously work each individual seed from its holdings, while giant flightless omnivores such as the anvilbeak, a descendant of the axbills that first appeared 40 million years ago, simply crush them to a pulp, cob and all, with enormous bills that work equally well to break open the marrow from bones left by other scavengers or even to catch and subdue smaller birds. Many small songbirds here, such as the tree-climbing blue-crowned false nuthatch and the melodious yellow-headed canary thrush, feed on a varied diet of seeds in winter, and abundant insect larvae in the summer.

A colorful pheasant-like game bird, distantly related to the turkey-like specimen previously noted in the desert biome, picks at fallen seeds and insects in the moss while a flightless swordbill, a lightweight cursorial predator descended from the large skykes of the dry plains of 25 million years ago that has moved into the forest and shrunken in size to better scurry through the trees and branches, searches the woodland of small animals it can catch in its long bill and swallow whole. Near a rain puddle a pair of sexually dimorphic waterfowl canaries rest, the white-faced male keeping an eye out for danger while his mate drinks. This species, longer of leg than most, has evolved semi-terrestrial habits again and nests in hollow forest trees, raising their precocial chicks in nearby streams.

Flowering clover and daisy-like sunflowers abound in the forests' sunlit clearing during the springtime.