Such expeditions are highly expensive to equip, since every piece of equipment will likely meet its match at least once while on the surface-and even the most careful packing and sealing may not keep spares safe until they are needed Early explorers often scoffed at the idea that mere plants could cause such trouble, until they found their glass etched by Acidmold, then metal devoured by Rustroot whenever it was left in contact with the ground for more than five minutes, and their plastics dissolved and leached away by any of a dozen or more surprisingly active and very deadly "mere plants " Fnrtfcer reference: ECAZ, PLANTS OF ECAZ, PLANTS OF. A great many useful plants have been discovered on the planet Ecaz since it was rediscovered in 300, but only the most common families are discussed here Lepidodendrales mutans (the ' fog-woods") Eqmsetales mesmeris (Source of ' Elacca Drug" and Semuta"), Rosa os-myrrah ("Plemscenta '), ' Earner Roots ' (source of "Sapho"),/5oeto cerfctr ("Verite ), and the microscopic plants that are used in the production of glowglobes (Veillonella methanomonas, Acttnomyccs lucifer, Scrpens eleun Etazi and Spheroporus electn a/b) FOOWOOD (Lepidodendrales mutans four families) Fogwood is responsible tor Ecaz s other popular name "the Sculptors' Paradise," from the unique property of the fogwoods to respond to human thought and to grow, influenced by these thoughts, into shapes that evoke a similar mental state in any viewer The tour families are Bradford (with two subfamilies Mountain and Northern), Lake Tzu-Lei and Spotted Appearance Fogwood is one of the most common plants on Ecaz, occupying habitats ranging from subarctic to tropical It has a very thick, soft trunk reaching up to twenty meters m height, with a crown of forking branches extending another ten meters The root system of the plants is unusually extensive, ranging for several hundred meters around the parent tree and delving up to one hundred meters underground The leaves of the fogwood vary with the subtype, but are always spirally placed and several times longer than they are wide, and are so numerous as to completely hide the upper branches of the tree The trunk and stems are made up of a slender cylinder of primary, pithy wood, surrounded by a much thicker layer ot phloem which exhibits the special properties that make fogwood so important, and which is in turn covered by a thin, elastic layer of smooth bark, In general, the trunk of a fogwood is approximately one-third as thick as it is tall, giving the plants a squat, unattractive appear ance m the wild The seed cones produced by Lepidodendrales mutans are large and awkward looking, and fogwood seeds have never been successfully germinated outside of the planetary atmosphere of Ecaz dogwood sculpture The phloem layer of the fogwood is able, in some unknown way, to detect the thoughts of higher life-forms This development surely has no present evo- ECAZ, PLANTS OF 198 ECAZ PLANTS OF lutionary value, because no animals other than insects inhabit Ecaz, so the thought-tropism of fogwood must be considered a serendipitous development When exposed to consistent human thoughts over a consider able period of time the adaptive phloem in the outer layer of the fogwood trunk will extrude, intrude and warp, precisely reacting to the thoughts After some time, dependent on the age of the tree, the complexity of the sculpture and the sculptor's willingness to cease refinement of the sculpture, the wood assumes a form which arouses thoughts in the viewer similar to those of the sculptor The physical form of a fogwood seldom corresponds to the subject being evoked, unless the sculptor was trying for just such an effect for emphasis or contrast In quiet surroundings the sculpture can be quite disorienting, because it is possible for the sight of a well-done fogwood to bnng about total sensory excitation, with not only thoughts being evoked but also sights, sounds, smells, memories, emotions, and tactile sensations When a fogwood sculptor has decided on a subject, he travels to the surface of Ecaz and selects, a suitable tree, which he registers with the Sculptors' Guild m Older to prevent mental contamination of his work For his own protection the sculptor then places a dome around the tree and stays within a few meters of his work, thinking about what he wants it to look like This is not as simple as it sounds, since the sculptor must think, as much as possible, only of the topic he wishes to sculpt otherwise, he may inex&icably 'muddy" the sculpture, producing a themeless mass that cannot be comprehended by viewers At the same time he must contend with the planetary surface of Ecaz FogwQOds are titled by common agreement among die viewers, since the sculpture, if weD done, should evoke ft certain title and no other Amateur sculptures are named by the artist, but it is a marit of a sculptor's ability and self-confidence to release an unti-tled piece and have it pick up a name by popular agreement The most famous examples of fogwood sculpture are 1.