The Xenobotany of Destiny 2: Nessus
When it comes to life on other planets, sentient life always takes center stage. Sentient life can’t develop in a vacuum, however, and the vibrant landscapes and environments showcased in Destiny 2 do a stellar job of fleshing out alien environments into believable ecosystems. Destiny 2, developed by Bungie, is a first-person shooter video game that contains many alien species and multiple destinations throughout our solar system, each with its own unique ecosystem and vibe. This article will focus on Nessus; a lush, forested planetoid with a variety of stunning plant life in shades of vibrant red and orange. In the quest to discover why the plant life on Nessus is so red, we’ll learn why the leaves of some Earth plants are red, dive into the climate and origins of Nessus, and speculate about which Earth plants the game designers based their models on.
If you play Destiny 2, especially in the Echoes era, you’ll know that Nessus does not look the same in every activity. I’ll be focusing here on the location itself as accessed through the Director, not the drained Nessus as seen in Battleground activities. I’d also like to acknowledge that I am not a botanist or a chemist and, while I did do a boatload of research for this, I may have misunderstood some of the finer points of the chemical reactions involved in plant life.
What is Nessus?
Nessus is both a real object in our solar system and a location in the video game Destiny 2. The object in our solar system called 7066 Nessus is a Centaur; a relatively small, icy planetoid that follows an irregular path around the sun between the orbits of Jupiter and Neptune. 7066 Nessus is not a sphere like planets are; its diameter ranges from roughly 20 miles to 45 miles and scientists believe that it is an oval shape. (Mou and Webster “Nessus”) Centaurs are thought to originate on the very fringes of our solar system and contain a mix of rocky material, water ice, and volatile compounds. If a Centaur ventured closer to the sun, it would most likely form a gaseous trail and look like a comet. (Delsemme 2024) Interestingly, Centaurs are either a bright red color like 7066 Nessus or a neutral brownish tone; it’s unclear why these objects only come in one of these two colors. (Peixinho 2012)
Thanks to an alien species called the Vex, the Nessus in Destiny 2 was terraformed from an icy ball into a forested paradise full of odd cubist rock formations and lush, vibrant red plant life. (Bungie “Looped”) Gnarled, multi-story trees create a glowing red canopy that throws dappled shade over the busy forest understory. Frog-like animals hop around shallow ponds and through red and blue grasses. Bright red ferns grow alongside cage-like orbs and tufts of skeletal leaves. Vines hang from trees and sheer rock faces in a tangle of color. Although in-game dialogue posits that these plants may not be entirely organic (Bungie “Ghost Scan: The Tangle, Nessus, #3”), I’d like to take a look at the biology of these plants through the lens of Earth plants.
Why Are Some Leaves Red?
Take a look at any yard, garden center, or nature documentary, and you’ll see plants with leaves in a broad array of colors. Leaves come in a thousand shades of green, yellow, red, brown, and even black! All of these colors are the result of a handful of pigments: green, yellow, and red.
A Thousand Shades of Green: Chlorophyll
Chlorophyll is a bright green pigment that plants use to turn sunlight into sugars and oxygen in a process called photosynthesis. Those sugars are then used by the plant to grow, repair damage, and keep the plant healthy. The oxygen is released into the atmosphere. Our eyes see chlorophyll as green because the pigment doesn’t absorb that wavelength of light and it bounces right back into our eyes. (National Geographic Society 2023)
Chlorophyll can only convert so much light into energy, however. When a plant suddenly starts receiving more light than its chlorophyll can handle, the photosynthesis process slows down significantly or even stops in a process called photoinhibition. During normal photosynthesis, plants create a small amount of reactive oxygen alongside the stable O₂. These reactive oxygen molecules, or “free radicals”, are normally useful to the plant and drive some necessary chemical reactions but if there are too many free radicals being created, they can damage the plant. Photoinhibition can cause photosynthesis to create more free radicals — this is where a plant’s other pigments come into play. (Gould 2004)
Yellow Means Slow Down: Xanthophyll
Xanthophyll is a type of yellow pigment that functions as a plant’s first line of defense against excess light and the threat of photoinhibition. In a horrendously complicated process called the xanthophyll cycle, xanthophyll pigments are converted between different forms, allowing excess sunlight to be chemically stored and eventually released as heat. This takes some of the pressure off of the chlorophyll, hopefully preventing it from getting too stressed and shutting down. (Lee and Gould 2002)
You can sometimes see this process in action when you purchase a new plant. Moving a plant from a store where it was grown to a very bright windowsill can sometimes cause the leaves to yellow. This yellowing is the plant reacting to the sudden increase in light by creating xanthophyll to protect the chlorophyll from being overwhelmed.
The Red Cross of Pigments: Anthocyanin
For most plants, anthocyanin is the reason why leaves are red. Anthocyanin pigments can range from red to blue depending on pH. If a plant has a problem, anthocyanin can soothe it. Too many free radicals? Anthocyanin is an efficient antioxidant that will snap up almost any reactive oxygen and nitrogen molecules it comes across. Too much light for the chlorophyll to keep up? Anthocyanin absorbs the green and yellow wavelengths of light that chlorophyll can’t use and reduces the strain. Studies have associated plants high in anthocyanin with greater resistance to chilling or freezing, salt stress, heavy metal contamination, drought, and physical damage. (Gould 2004)
As incredible as anthocyanin is, it takes a lot of energy for plants to create it and move it to the correct place in each cell. (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica 2024) Plants that grow in areas with more environmental stressors can evolve to put more of their resources into creating anthocyanin for protection, resulting in redder leaves.
Why Are the Plants On Nessus Red?
If we assume that the plants on Nessus are similar to Earth plants, we can start to tease out reasons why they may have evolved to be so red. Anthocyanin and xanthophyll are created in response to environmental stressors; I believe those stressors are both climate-related and the result of the alien terraforming that allowed the plants to grow in the first place.
While I could not find any mentions of what the post-terraforming Nessian climate is like in Destiny 2, we can draw a few conclusions from what we know about 7066 Nessus in our solar system. 7066 Nessus has an irregular orbit around the sun that lasts roughly 122 Earth years (Mou and Webster “Nessus”) and takes the object from roughly 12 AU to over 37 AU from the sun. Earth is one AU from the sun, roughly 93 million miles. This incredibly elongated orbit would mean that the seasons on Nessus vary wildly in temperature and light level — two environmental stressors that are known to significantly increase a plant’s anthocyanin production. (He 2020) (Zhao 2022)
The Vex, the species that terraformed Nessus from an icy Centaur into a lush forested planetoid, are a fascinating species all on their own. The Vex are a hivemind-type species of single-celled organisms suspended in a solution of salts (including sodium, calcium, lead, and plutonium salts) in water called radiolaria. (Destiny Dev Team 2020) Radiolaria creates and powers several types of solid metal bodies that range from bipedal, humanoid shapes to gigantic floating spinal columns. In their quest to terraform Nessus, the Vex have permeated Nessus with radiolaria and created a groundwater-type system with the fluid that coexists alongside with the planet’s water. It’s easy to imagine the water-soluble parts of radiolaria leaching into Nessus’s groundwater supply and contaminating the soil. The Vex make their metal bodies out of bronze (Bungie “Legend: The Black Garden”), an alloy of copper and tin that can have other metals mixed in to change the alloy’s strength and flexibility. Notably, heavy metals such as zinc, manganese, and nickel are commonly added to bronze alloys (Warner Brothers Foundry Company “Bronze”) and I would expect the Vex to also keep some of these elements on hand for fabricating new bodies.
Both heavy metals and salt (specifically NaCl, a sodium salt and what we call table salt) are toxic to plants in high enough quantities but the way they impact plants differs wildly. When salt dissolves in water, the sodium (Na) and chloride (Cl-) ions are pulled apart from each other and surrounded by water molecules. This forms a homogenous solution: salt water or saline solution. Salt water is too dense to be absorbed through a plant’s roots and it can even pull water molecules out of the plant’s roots and further dehydrate the plant. Even if there is a fresh water source diluting the salt water around a plant’s roots, sodium and chloride ions from dissolved salt can be absorbed instead of critical nutrients like potassium and phosphorus. (Bayer and Njue 2016) Studies have shown that plants whose roots are exposed to salt water produce far more anthocyanin than plants that are exposed to fresh water. (Eryılmaz 2006)
Heavy metals are a category of elemental metals with a density at least five times greater than water. Some heavy metals are found naturally in soils and are used in tiny amounts by plants as micronutrients; copper, zinc, manganese, nickel, iron, cobalt, and aluminum are all heavy metals classified as micronutrients for most plants. Other heavy metals, including lead, arsenic, and cadmium, are not useful to plants and will only do harm. Heavy metals absorbed by plants can replace parts of a plant’s cell walls and membranes, can replace ions needed in photosynthesis, and can lead to the creation of more free radicals during the photosynthesis and respiration processes. Some plants have evolved to be able to thrive despite high concentrations of heavy metal ions; these hyperaccumulators are able to more effectively transport and store heavy metals in dedicated areas. Also interesting to note is that some heavy metal ions can only be absorbed by plants if the solution they are dissolved in is on the acidic side of the pH scale. (Angulo-Bejarano 2021) Not only does anthocyanin efficiently absorb excess free radicals created during photosynthesis and respiration, it can noticeably increase a plant’s tolerance to heavy metals and allow the plant to thrive in less than ideal circumstances. (Ahammed and Yang 2022)
I hypothesize that the plants on Nessus are so red because they are absolutely loaded with red anthocyanin pigment. This anthocyanin would help the plants survive and thrive despite changing temperatures, light levels, saline groundwater, and heavy metal contamination from the Vex.
What Plants Grow On Nessus?
Walking around the Nessus location in Destiny 2, we can see four different types of plants: terrestrial, epiphytic, lithophytic, and aquatic. Terrestrial plants grow in the ground and pull all of their nutrients and moisture from the soil or the medium that they’ve rooted in. Epiphytes grow on top of larger plants and lithophytes grow entirely on rocks. Both epiphytes and lithophytes gather nutrients from debris that settle around their roots and moisture from rain and the air. (Cota-Sánchez “Definitions”) Aquatic plants grow either completely or partially in water. Plants on Nessus seem to be primarily epiphytic or terrestrial with a smattering of lithophytic vines and one single aquatic plant.
In this section, I will go through every single plant I could find in the Nessus location in Destiny 2 as accessed through the Director. We’ll take a look at the features of the plants on Nessus, give them names, and compare them to other Earth plants that they may be modeled on.
Terrestrial Plants
Red Flame Kapok Tree
In my opinion, Nessus’s defining feature is its colossal, sprawling trees. I cannot emphasize how huge these trees are. They tower over the landscape and create an electric red canopy that throws dappled light onto everything below. Their gently sloping branches host almost every epiphytic plant the planet has to offer and their sprawling buttress roots are wide enough to walk on.
I’ve decided to name these giants red flame kapok trees after the Earth tree called the kapok. Kapok trees are from the neotropical regions of Central and South America and they can grow up to 200 feet tall. It was tough to find a close Earth match to these trees on Nessus but the kapok’s extensive buttress root system and the gentle slope of their branches made them the closest option.
Even the leaves of the kapok tree are similar to the leaves on the red flame trees of Nessus.The pointed shape and vein placement of the two trees’ leaves match but it isn’t a perfect fit. While kapok trees have green leaves in clusters of five, the red flame trees have a more irregular distribution of red leaves that grow in clusters of two or three.
Some other trees that I considered when looking for a match were the live oak and the banyan tree. Both trees feature buttress roots and sprawling branches but the general shape of the trees didn’t match closely enough for them to make the cut. I’ve included pictures of both types of tree here so you can take a look at their structure and branch shapes.
Honeycomb Tree
The Honeycomb tree is a thin, spindly tree that only seems to grow tall in wide open areas. In more shaded or crowded areas, it grows short and shrub-like. Most of the Honeycomb trees in the game are short shrubs but since they can grow tall, I’ve called it a tree.
The Honeycomb tree’s trunk has a distinctive pattern of either holes or dark bark that creates a repeating pattern of ovals. All of the examples I was able to find (from tiny sprouts to shrubs and tall trees) had this oval pattern and that was the identifying characteristic that linked all of these plants together into one species. In addition to this plant having several different sizes, the thin, pointed leaves can be a few different colors: bright red, dark maroon, or a silvery green.
I wasn’t able to find any Earth plants quite like the Honeycomb tree but I did find a plant that looks similar to the trunk section. The cholla cactus is a cactus native to the Southwestern US and Northern Mexico. It has an internal skeleton made of a wood-like material that is only exposed when the cactus dies and the outer layer rots off.
Lacy Ground Lotus
The plant that I’m calling the lacy ground lotus is a plant that seems to grow everywhere on Nessus. The plant grows two to four leaves on a thin, woody stem and groups of these plants seem to cluster together almost like a groundcover. Its round leaves fade from a vibrant green at the center near the stem to an electric red around the edges. The end of each leaf is fenestrated in an irregular, lacy pattern. Initially, I thought this pattern of holes was insect or environmental damage but every single lacy ground lotus leaf across Nessus has a similar pattern so I’ve concluded that the plants grow that way.
The lacy ground lotus seems to grow mostly in the ground but there are also examples of it growing in shallow water and on top of a particularly crowded tree branch. This suggests that the plant needs some sort of medium to grow its roots into but it is not too picky about the depth or type of medium.
I had trouble finding an Earth plant that looked close to this plant until tripping across a picture of the red tiger lotus. The red tiger lotus is an aquatic plant native to Africa that is popular in the aquarist and fishkeeping communities. The stems of the red tiger lotus typically join the leaf towards the center and they don’t have fenestrated leaf tips like the lacy ground lotus. This being said, the coloration and general shape is the closest match I could find to an Earth plant.
Goblin Thistle
There is asparagus on Nessus. No, really. Hear me out. The plant that I’ll call a goblin thistle is fairly widespread on Nessus and seems to grow well in direct sun, indirect light, or even in extremely dim underground areas with artificial light. The dark brownish plant appears to have no traditional leaves, only triangular, scale-like flaps alongside the stalk. The scales are typically green in the center and fade to red or purple around the edges. Each stem tip forms a bud out of these triangular scaly structures, some of which grow in a chevron shape with a hole in the center of the scale.
Asparagus on Earth grows in stalks with no traditional leaves, only triangular scale leaves. These scale leaves are concentrated at the tip of the plant in a bud. Asparagus differs from goblin thistle in that it is a vibrant green and grows mostly straight, where goblin thistle seems to grow in a more curved, twisty manner.
Pestle Plant
The pestle plant is truly the wildest, most alien-looking plant on Nessus. This organism could very well be an animal or parasite of some sort but for the purposes of this article, we’ll call it a plant. The pestle plant has a blobby, tubular structure topped by a fleshy-looking crown with multiple spikes. The body of the pestle plant is mainly a dark purple or navy blue. The dark sheath ends abruptly in a violent orange crown featuring from two to roughly twenty whitish green toothy spikes. The spikes are thick and chunky; a few seem to have their tips broken off and most have a sharp blade-like edge.
Pestle plants seem to grow almost exclusively around or in shallow standing water. Looking at this plant, I like to imagine that the inside of the column is the same material as the orange crown. Perhaps the plant grows vertically by extruding more of the orange flesh, which then hardens and changes color after a certain amount of time exposed to air. The toothlike structures could be some modified version of cactus spike or they could be mineral deposits that the plant has absorbed from the nearby water that have crystallized.
Predictably, I had trouble finding an Earth plant lookalike but I did find some great examples of fleshy, oddly shaped plants that the pestle plant’s designers could have been inspired by. Hydronora Africana, called jackal food, is an African parasitic plant whose fleshy flowers feature a dark brown, textured outside and a bright orange inside. Lithops, called the living stone or split rock, is a succulent native to Southern Africa that mimics the color and texture of rock. Neither have teeth but they match the vibe of the pestle plant in that neither looks like a standard plant.
Baby Bamboo
Baby bamboo is a short bamboo-like plant that grows almost anywhere on Nessus as long as there is dirt. The stems are a deep red with fairly evenly spaced white rings. Tufts of oval shaped orange and yellow leaves are irregularly spaced out on the stem. Unlike Earth bamboo that grows in very tall, dense thickets, Nessus’s baby bamboo grows in loose groups. Its maximum height seems to be only a few feet tall.
On Earth, red dragon bamboo comes closest in appearance but it’s not a perfect match. Baby bamboo has much more defined rings that are spaced more closely. Red dragon bamboo is also very tall and tops out at 20 feet tall.
Red Thing
The Red Thing is a mostly terrestrial fern-like plant with heavily textured leaves. On Nessus, we see both large and small Red Things. The largest ones are rooted in dirt but there are small plants that have rooted on red flame kapok roots that already have a significant amount of plant matter already on them. This leads me to believe that Red Things cannot truly thrive unless their roots have significant ground to spread out.
The Red Thing is remarkably similar in shape to the tobacco plant. Both plants have long, pointed leaves that grow from a central point and drape in graceful curves. The leaves of both tobacco plants and Red Things also have a pronounced vascular pattern, giving them a rough-looking appearance.
Interesting to note is that there are some Red Things that appear to have rooted in shallow standing water on Nessus. It’s not clear if the plants were rooted in dry ground before the area flooded or if the plants were able to root in an existing puddle.
The Red Thing also appears to have a tree form. Perhaps there is a variation of the plant that grows more vertically if given the space. I was only able to find this tree form in one open, clear area with bright sunlight.
Puffball Vine
The Puffball vine is a terrestrial vine that grows similar to a groundcover in areas with exposed dirt on Nessus. Puffball vines have light brown stems with reddish mottling and an abundance of bright red tufts. These vines don’t seem to have any leaves other than the red puffballs and there are two distinct puffball structures that I can pick out. I believe that the hairy, fingerlike puffball is a flower bud in the process of opening and the rounded, spiky puffball is the fully open flower.
The puffball vine is almost a perfect match for Earth’s clematis vine. Clematis is known for its absolutely stunning flowers but when those flowers die and go to seed, the seed pods of the vine grow in fluffy little tufts that look remarkably similar to the puffball vine on Nessus.
Grasses
Identifying grass from a video game is a fool’s errand. In this section, I will skip almost every Earth plant comparison and just catalogue the types of grass on Nessus.
There seem to be two distinct types of thin-blade grass on Nessus; a solid red grass and a red grass with blue tips. Both grasses grow in dirt areas and also on areas of the red flame kapok branches where there would presumably be decomposed lichen and plant matter that would act as a soil. We can also see a brown thin-bladed grass scattered around Nessus. I believe that the brown grass is the dead version of either the blue tip or solid red grass but it could always be its own variety.
The red grass with blue tips could be based loosely on Japanese blood grass. Japanese blood grass is an eye-catching thin-blade grass with stems that abruptly transition from green to bright red about halfway up the grass blade.
There are also a variety of thick-blade grasses with similar variations to the thin-blade grasses. The predominant variety is an orangey-red with yellow tips, but we can also find a solid red variety and a brown variety. The thick-blade grasses have scattered darker streaks and mottling, suggesting that they are either patterned or textured.
Kelp Grass
In a similar vein as the other grasses, there is one wide-leaf plant on Nessus that I have not been able to find an Earth comparison to. I can’t tell if it’s a taller wide-blade grass or if it’s a different type of plant but I do know that it appears almost exclusively on the ground and seems to need dirt or a medium to anchor its roots in. This wide-leaf plant appears glossy in some light and has both a red and a brown variation. The color of the browner variation reminds me a bit of kelp but the similarity doesn’t continue beyond that.
Epiphytes
Red Lichen
Red lichen is absolutely everywhere on Nessus. It blankets rocks, trees, and dirt alike in a blaze of bright red and it seems to thrive on the surface of Nessus at any light level. I haven’t seen any of this red lichen in the Centaur’s underground cave network, suggesting that it does need some amount of sunlight to thrive.
The red lichen covering Nessus is reminiscent of both fire-red lichen, native to the western US, and firedot lichen, found across the continental US. Interesting to note is that lichens are not a single plant; they are a symbiotic relationship between algae and fungus that results in a scaly texture and an incredible resistance to drought, harsh temperatures, heavy metal contamination, and atmospheric pollutants. (US Forest Service “About Lichens”)
Some of the red lichen on Nessus is found partially submerged in water or around small ponds and this initially led me to believe that it was partially based on red Sphagnum moss. Sphagnum moss is a bog plant that grows in very wet conditions and it would not be able to grow on rocks and trees like the red lichen on Nessus.
Green Lichen
Much harder to find on Nessus is green lichen. This elusive plant is found almost exclusively on tree branches or exposed roots and it’s tough to tell whether the plant was intended to have a similar texture to the red lichen or a softer, more cushiony appearance. This green lichen could absolutely be a moss and not a lichen. On Earth, there are so many green mosses and lichens that finding a match to the few screenshots I have would be nigh impossible but we can always appreciate the color contrast it brings to the ecosystem.
Lace Lichen
Nessian lace lichen, like its Earthside parallel, is an ethereal curtain of pale green or yellow that grows on large trees. On Nessus, lace lichen tends to grow in single gossamer sheets that stretch between exposed tree roots or dangle below soaring branches.
On Earth, lace lichen grows in a ribbon-like structure and creates piles of lacy material that dangle from trees. Lace lichen is the state lichen of California and grows along the Pacific coast all the way from Alaska to the very southern tip of California.
Nessian Hanging Moss
Nessian hanging moss is a lovely, soft-looking plant that can be seen draped over large tree branches and dangling from rock faces. In the game, we see red, green, and brown variants of this plant, perhaps representing adult plants, new growth, and dead plants.
This plant is a dead ringer for the Earth plant called Spanish moss. Spanish moss is not a moss (nor is it from Spain), but a flowering plant that grows on trees in the humid southeastern US. From this plant alone, we can confirm that Nessus must be humid.
Basket Plant
Nessus has an abundance of skeletal-looking spheres in red, orange, and green scattered across the landscape. They gather in piles on the ground, perch on rock formations, and cling to trees and other plants. Since they seem to grow anywhere and everywhere, I will say that they’re epiphytic.
Initially, I thought that perhaps these plants were similar to tumbleweeds; dried-out husks of shallow-rooted plants that were pulled up from the ground by wind and tossed around. Unbelievably, it turns out that these basket plants have an almost exact Earth match in the latticed stinkhorn. The latticed stinkhorn is a fungus that grows primarily underground until it is ready to fruit. The cage-like structure contains spores and reeks like rotting meat, attracting insects that will spread its spores.
Wyvern Tendril
The wyvern tendril plant is an odd epiphyte that grows on rock ledges and tree branches. It has brick red leaves that swoop out from the center and fray at the ends into a light brown, grassy fringe. It doesn’t appear to have roots and I was unable to find any smaller versions of the plant so we don’t have much information about how it grows.
I was unable to find a great Earth plant parallel to the wyvern tendril but I was able to find a fungus that grows in a similar shape. The octopus stinkhorn fungus is much smaller than the wyvern tendril plant but its fruiting body grows in a similar swooping shape. The octopus stinkhorn, just like the latticed stinkhorn that the basket plant is based on, stinks like rotting meat in order to attract insects that will spread its spores.
Harpy’s Nest Fern
One of my favorite plants populating Nessus is the harpy’s nest fern. The harpy’s nest fern grows both on large trees and in patches of dirt. This fern can grow huge; I would estimate the largest ones to be about 6.5 to 7 feet tall. The brick red leaves are broad and thick with a very heavily textured leaf and can sometimes fade to a more yellow-orange near the tip. The stem is a mottled red and black and continues up the center of the leaf almost all the way to the top. Some of these harpy’s nest ferns have a stump-like structure in the center. It is not clear what the stump is for but perhaps this is where new leaves sprout.
The harpy’s nest fern is remarkably similar to the bird’s nest fern. The bird’s nest fern is an epiphytic fern that grows on trees in Earth’s tropical regions. New leaves sprout from the very center of the plant, which could be where the ideas for the central stump in the harpy’s nest fern came from.
Unlike the smooth leaves of the bird’s nest fern, the harpy’s nest fern has thick leaves with a leathery, pebbled texture. I wasn’t able to find a perfect match to Earth plants but the texture of the leatherleaf viburnum comes close.
Pinnacle Fern
Pinnacle ferns are stunning reddish orange feathery ferns that live almost exclusively high in the air, whether they’re on tree branches or tall rock formations. Pinnacle ferns have 2-pinnate fronds; their leaves, or fronds, divide twice as they grow to make a soft, feathery look. (Hardy Ferns Foundation Fern Parts) Their fronds extend from the root system on woody stems that seem to vary in color with location and lighting. I believe that their true color is close to a dark gray with white patches but lighting on Nessus makes it hard to tell.
We can also see plenty of small pinnacle ferns on Nessus. Some larger ferns have groups of small, new growth fronds around their base, and some smaller ferns are scattered across the landscape. It’s interesting to note that while there are a handful of small ferns seemingly rooted in the ground, the largest pinnacle ferns on Nessus seem to live on red flame kapok trees, on rocks, or even on dead trees.
Ferns are an incredibly old type of plant, dating back roughly 300 million years. Because of this, there are a wild variety of ferns on Earth. The closest frond match I was able to find is the Australian tree fern. This Earth fern is terrestrial and is native to Australia and Tasmania. As a tree fern grows and matures, its roots begin to twine together with its rhizome (underground stem) into a trunk-like structure. The fern grows straight up and can actually host epiphytes of its own.
In my quest to find a match for the pinnacle fern’s fronds, I found some incredibly helpful fern references. If you’re interested in a photographic guide to the ferns of Belize and Britain, check out these resources. (Chambers “Fern and Lycophyte Genera of BELIZE”) (British Pteridological Society. “What’s that fern?”)
Lithophytes
Nessus Creeper Vine
The Nessus creeper vine appears to be a lithophyte, draping across sheer cliff faces and rock surfaces in areas with seemingly no dirt or rooting medium available. This ubiquitous vine has bright red, pointed leaves in groups of three and a smooth dark brown vine. In the game, we also see versions of this plant with black stems and reddish-black leaves. Perhaps these black versions of the vine are dead or perhaps they are a color variant within the species.
The Nessus creeper seems to be modeled on the Virginia creeper vine, a plant found in the Eastern US. The Virginia creeper has a smooth, dark brown vine and leaves in groups of three or five. In spring and summer, the Virginia creeper’s leaves are dark green. In fall, the leaves redden and die off, leaving a bare vine for the winter months. The Virginia creeper is notably different from the Nessus creeper in that it is a terrestrial plant and needs to be rooted in dirt to grow.
Bare Vine
This vine is all over rock faces on Nessus but I could not find any examples of it with leaves. Its medium brown stem crawls all over the sheer rock faces of Nessus, particularly in sections of the rock face with deep cracks or where two structures converge. This vine grows in a rib-like pattern with pairs of new shoots branching off of a main stem. I cannot find another vine on Nessus with the same branching pattern and, after sinking a solid hour into looking at vine structures on Earth, I decided to put my energy elsewhere.
Aquatic
Jacobson’s Floater
As far as I can tell, this plant is only found in one location on Nessus. Jacobson’s floater is an aquatic plant with round, bright green leaves and it seems exclusive to a waterlogged ravine in a location called The Tangle. The vibrant green leaves practically glow against the red canopy reflected on the water’s surface.
The leaves of the Jacobson’s floater plant are speckled in the game but I believe this indicates that the leaves are textured or that they have water droplets on them that reflect light. Another option is that the leaves are fenestrated and have a lacy pattern of holes on each leaf.
Two Earth plants stand out to me as potential matches for Jacobsen’s Floater: water lily and frogbit. Water lilies sink their roots into the bed of a pond and sprout long stems that allow some of their leaves to rest on the surface of the water. These surface leaves, called lily pads, can range from circles to heart shapes to ovals. Frogbit is a true floating plant in that its roots dangle freely in the water. Its leaves are more heart-shaped than circular but I feel like it’s close enough to have played a role in the development of Jacobson’s floater.
What is Nessus Like?
We’ve learned about the Centaur called Nessus in Destiny 2 and its real life counterpart, 7066 Nessus. We’ve learned that plants under environmental stress make red anthocyanin and yellow xanthophyll and how those pigments help the plant regulate. We’ve taken a look at every single plant on the surface of Nessus and found parallels with Earth plants. After all of this, what can we infer about Nessus as an environment?
Nessus is almost certainly humid but I don’t believe it is as hot as Earth’s tropics. With its 122 year elliptical orbit around the sun, Nessus would be either gaining or losing sunlight at a rate that would cause a dramatic seasonal shift in temperature and possibly also a shift in plant life. With the abundance of stinkhorn-like organisms, the planet’s forest would have a distinctive smell; these fungi likely evolved to smell like whatever the wildlife on Nessus is attracted to. Even though Nessus has native asparagus, it and every other plant on the Centaur is undoubtedly saturated with heavy metals that leached from the Vex’s radiolaria into the water table.
Despite the potential for heavy metal poisoning, Nessus is my favorite location in Destiny 2 and it was an absolute treat to do such detailed research on it. Destiny 2’s creatives consistently excel at building environments that both add to the story and just feel good to play in. I am so grateful to the Destiny 2 team past and present for creating a world full of details that are so easy to get lost in.
Acknowledgements
Thank you so much to my wonderful mama, Coleen, for helping me find plant lookalikes and for letting me ramble about plants for a couple weeks straight. Thanks to Brandon W. for the moral support and thanks to the Ishtar Collective Discord server for helping me find in-game references to Nessus’s climate.
Bibliography
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