Following is a list of vegetation known to grow wild in the region near the characters' home. Whether some of these flora are naturally-occurring, or were brought there deliberately and then allowed to go native, is a mystery which only the druids and the gods may know.


Bitterbean (coffee)
Possessing a distinctive smell that can carry on the wind for many miles, this tree generates beans that, when dried or roasted and then ground, can be used to brew a strong drink which many miners favor for its ability to temporarily ward off fatigue. Unfortunately, the more one indulges, the more one seems to require it, just as with alcohol, and so most prefer to use the dark tea sparingly.

Blursweet (marula)
The fruits of the blursweet tree are tough and unsatisfying when new, but deliciously sweet and juicy when ripe. Avoiding salt-tainted ground in favor of areas where water is closer to its roots, the tree also tends to produce quite a lot of fruit, sometimes more than can be harvested easily. The fruit that is left hanging on the branches, or which drops off unused, quickly ferments into a crude natural alcohol which is sometimes sought after by animals who live nearby. Some collect the fruit and allow it to safely ferment, on purpose, with the intention of making a more refined alcohol; thus is produced the most popular and available intoxicant in the region.

Fireblossom (sour fig)
Often popping up quickly, in patches, after a wild sandstorm, these stunted plants have beautiful, bright blossoms and matching fruit that hovers between sweet and sour. The leaves are also edible, and when available, are usually plucked and added to soups or fried fare to enhance the flavor of meat.

Grimgrass
This strange, tall, brown grass is dangerous and illegal to harvest—the primary reason being, grimgrass is mildly toxic...and strongly hallucinogenic. It's very common for the visions it creates to be rather nasty, inducing or amplifying paranoia and terror with varying degrees of severity. Removing the husk and germ (and generally processing it as much as possible) removes all toxins, and reduces the psychoactive properties; however, since the stuff is banned, no one would dare grind it (or risk contaminating other precious foods in the process). For those who are down enough on their luck that they risk starvation otherwise, it is tempting to process grimgrass secretly, in small quantities. Some claim that roasting the grains actually enhances their potency, but no one will admit to actually doing this, or explain who told them that it might.

Hotbloom (pepper)
A low-growing plant that makes its home in shady areas, firebloom is typically a good indicator of water near the surface, since it tends not to store as much moisture as most other greenery does, in such a dry climate. It produces large, bulbous red fruits that are edible, if not exactly exciting to ingest; more importantly, its seeds can be plucked and husked to create several different forms of hot, dry spice—an important additive to most dishes and the perfect complement to the overabundance of salt, especially in preserved meats. There is at least one foreign variant of hotbloom called zeetchwan, distinguished by the numb, tingly feeling it creates in the mouth.

Oilberry (olive)
Growing on short, twisted trees that tend to spread wide, these are the stone fruits nurtured by Tarlish. Edible almost as soon as they appear, oilberries have a variety of flavors and textures depending on whether they are plucked early and green, ripening and yellow-green, or fully ripe and black. Their pits are hard and inedible, but their flesh is flavorful and moist; most importantly, when crushed in the mechanical press, they yield the pale green to yellow oil everyone loves for cooking and seasoning. The scent of it always means food, and it preserves earthenware cookpots by causing food to stick and burn less than the butter laboriously churned from quickhorn milk.

Puckerfruit (carissa)
These stumpy trees—nearly bushes—seem to grow nearly anywhere, but their small, reddish fruits must be picked at just the right time; otherwise, they can be responsible for significant digestive discomfort. When fully ripe, though, they are palatable enough, if quite sour, and (more importantly) very juicy.

Ripplestalk (tamarind)
So named for the way the tree's spindly leaves appear to billow like cloth in the breeze, this salt-tolerant plant sprouts brown pods that can be ground into a spice, made into jam or sauce, or eaten raw (once the beans have been pried from the casings). While not exactly common, the fruit keeps well and is a staple ingredient in most dishes, as well as a worthwhile reward for industrious climbers.

Searsoothe (aloe vera)
While it mostly functions as a medicine—its juices being particularly potent at salving or even preventing burns from the harsh sun—this moist, tender plant is thankfully common enough to eat, too, and has been a blessing to many a thirsty miner or herder. The thick leaves are filled with a greenish, translucent gel that—while bland—is highly restorative and good for the digestion as well as thirst. It's a common sight to see folk going about their outside chores with a layer of searsoothe paste flaking off their skin.

Spinepod (prickly pear)
While, technically speaking, one can eat any sort of cactus, only a few of them are actually worth it, unless one is faced with the prospect of imminent dehydration—a death sentence in the arid climate. Spinepod produces a delicious fruit with a tough, thorned exterior, and its juice is rendered into a sugar or even a crude alcohol by those too industrious to indulge in simply eating the pods, seeds and all.


Unlike those above, these plants are foreign, discovered only beyond the boundaries of the known dust.

Lymen
The oblong greenish-yellow fruit of this short tree is both sweet and sour, as well as powerfully acidic. Almost every part of the fruit is useful, from the oils in the pith to the zest of the rind, and its flavor is among the most popular there are for artificial drink syrups and the like. Like any large plant, they need as much water as they can reasonably get in your world's dry atmosphere, so they're the beneficiaries of orchardry more often than a free-growing flora.

Pomigrant
The pomigrant tree bears large fruits with a thick rind that protects its contents: A plethora of small seeds, each surrounded by a water-rich red gel and a bitter white membrane. Its forward flavor makes it a mainstream ingredient for anyone who can afford to do their own cooking, in the big cities, and for everyone else it's a common additive in drinks and sweets.

Starby
Small, plump berries that grow close to the ground. They favor partial shade, and their sweet, luscious flesh has a high water content that makes them a real treat in the wild. Favored by both birds and smaller shieldbacks, starbies produce copious tiny seeds that travel well but digest poorly—a survival adaptation that helps the plant to propagate. Unfortunately, it does them little good, as starbies grow poorly in the loose, dry soil of the desert and are therefore mostly found as a hydroponics crop under the control of a water guild.