The Honeypot Tree

The Honeypot

The honeypot is a small low-growing shrub closely related to the wellwood tree and the puddlebud which can be found in Serina's tropics in the Pangeacene, where it colonizes bogs and wetlands. It is more derived than either of its relatives. It is notable for its very stunted size, in comparison even to the puddlebud and especially the wellwood and lack of a pronounced woody trunk. Instead, it grows as a many-stemmed bush, low to the ground, attaining a maximum diameter of its branches of about an inch and a half and a maximum height of six to seven feet. Plants are typically wider than tall, up to ten feet around, and sucker from their root systems, further expanding their size.

As do other members of its family, the honeypot's branches have a tendency to form a cup-like structure when the leading stem is terminated after producing a flower stalk. While new branches then spring up from below it, the stump becomes hollow and widens into a bowl. The bowls of the honeypot, due to the thin diameter of its stems, are only one to three inches wide, but become very deep, the stem hollowing out up to twelve inches down. Like those of the puddlebud, these structures naturally collect water. This is not their primary function, though for the honeypot typically grows in damp, saturated environments where drought is not a concern. Rather, once the plants' pots are filled, it begins to extrude a sugary sap solution from glands located inside the stem which lures in pollinating insects and gives the bowls a faint fruity aroma. Beetles and ants alight on the edge of the bowl, mistaking it for a flower, and head downward toward the source of the fragrance. But the edge of the cup is smooth and affords them little traction - as they cross the threshold, they slip and fall into the water below. There, in the honeypot's resevoir, they drown and decompose, the stem absorbing the broken down nutrients as they are made available. The honeypot does not produce digestive enzymes, but relies on the natural process of decompositon to break down its victims, and is thus not technically considered predatory, though as it does attract and derive nutrients from insects, it could be considered protocarnivorous.

above: a branch of the honeypot tree showing pitchers in two stages of development. A mature structure is visible to the left, with a second developing from the offshoot to the right, showing that this stem flowered and set seed sometime within the past year.

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The ancestral form of all bowl trees - including the wellwood, the honeypot, and the puddlebud - was likely a long-lived detritivore like the modern wellwood which didn't develop its bowl until late in life. The puddlebud represents an intermediate stage, being smaller and quicker to develop its adaptations, while the short-lived and bushy honeypot can be considered the most evolved member of the group. It first flowers - and thus its stems begin forming into bowls - by just a year of age - a rate of development one hundred times that of the wellwood, which in turn takes at least ten times as long to mature as a puddlebud. Its seeds are very similar to the crops of nuts produced by wellwoods except smaller, and their seed coats covered in sharp spines to dissuade hungry animals, since it does not produce as many as its larger relatives and thus can afford to waste fewer. The seeds of the puddlebud, not surprisingly, are also of an intermediate character, with small thorns. The puddlebud's desert adaptations have modified the form of its foliage into thick succulent leaves very unlike the ancestral form, but those of the honeypot are very similar to those of the juvenile wellwood and are armed with the same histamine-producing spines to dissuade herbivores. Because of their relatively harsh growing environment in bogs and swamps, however, which is relatively unattractive to browsing animals, the strength of the honeypots' sting is normally less severe. An exception is in the upland honeypot, or meadow scourge, a subspecies even smaller than the common form which grows in low-lying meadows and grassy areas where grazers are numerous. As can be inferred from its name, the sting of this form is especially intense, resulting in itchy red welts wherever unprotected skin comes into contact with its foliage.