Cottonflower
Cottonflowers are a cauliflower-shaped plant native to the nurlak country Fallen Cloud. They grow to about 1 meter tall and have three main parts to them:
• The flower, which gives the plant its name and can be harvested and turned into fabric.
• The leafs, which can be used for a large variety of medicinal purposes from asthma treatment, to curing the self-feeding sickness, to simple pain relief. They can also be used as a recreational drug, given to children to help strengthen their immune system, and is • believed to reduce the chance of miscarriage when drunk as a tea.
• The seeds, which are edible, can be stored for years without going bad, and grow in abundance.
Cottonflower plants are extremely difficult to germinate but are very hardy once they sprout and are nearly impossible to kill. They do best with minimal amounts of water and aren’t picky growers, able to survive growing in dirt, clay, and even stone.
The plants take about 10 years to reach full maturity and, no matter how much is cut from them, will grow back as long as their roots are left alone. Plants can be harvested for medicine after 2 years (though they don’t have very big leafs), cotton after their 4th year, and seeds after their 6th year.
The 10-year maturity of the cottonflower plant proved to be a rather significant problem in in the 10,050’s. In 10,054 AE, the country of Fallen Cloud and all of its farms growing cottonflower plants were destroyed in an out-of-control fire that damaged even the great root system of the plants. This fire was later believed to be a terror attack, as similar fires were subsequently set on smaller-scale farms and storage supplies of the cottonflower leafs. With the supply of cottonflower gone, the self-feeding sickness spread rapidly until an alternate cure was discovered. It was only in the early 10,100’s that the cottonflower supply was properly restored and stocks of the plant stabilised.