Flowering Sea Cow

The Flowering Sea Cow is an organism of the Western Threshold, found most often where warm ocean currents or steam vents pass through the seas. In the present age, it is considered a plant, though this is not entirely true, the Sea Cow sharing traits of both plants and animals.

Sea Cows are oblong, with a rubbery outer skin studded with blunt calcite spikes, looking somewhat like an armoured squash or large cucumber. They have a system of root tendrils which emerge from their base to keep them fixed in place, while they absorb scraps and nourishment from the water through their skin.

A Flowering Sea Cow takes several years to mature, and when it does a bright flourescent orange flower blossoms from its tip, releasing a cloud of reproductive juices into the water. When the clouds of two Flowering Sea Cows meet, they produce one or more 'seeds' which sink and grow into new Sea Cows.

At the point of maturity, the Flowering Sea Cow sees its greatest use to humans: if harvested, the outer skin and tendrils are peeled off to reveal a thick red internal structure, nearly identical to a full sirloin cut from beef Cattle in appearance, taste, and texture, though with the slightest hint of seafood flavour... an expert chef can conceal even that small trace of the sea. Amongst the cuisines of the Western Threshold, where there are few sources of red meat, this makes the Flowering Sea Cow highly valuable.

Divers have an easy time locating mature Flowering Sea Cows due to the presence of their flower, and despite their meaty texture they do not seem to attract the attention of sharks or Siaka. Some Western islanders cultivate Flowering Sea Cows, though this is a difficult prospect as it is hard to match the requirements of temperature and nutrition they seem to demand... a few Wood-aspected manses on Western islands include water gardens where they can be cultivated in quantity under essence-controlled conditions.

Forgotten in the current Age, flowering sea cows were a project of the Solar Deliberative in the early First Age to provide sources of red meat to the populations of the West, a project which also created the Muttonbird.