Germination
The life-cycle of a dryad begins with a seed. The seed of a dryad is about 45cm in length and 34cm in width. It is surrounded by a thick, dark green testa of spiny tendrils flowing upwards to a point. Exposed on the surface at its center is the dryad’s headstone—a hard, stone-like organ that forms the center of the dryad’s nervous system. Once the seed is buried underground—usually by a sister caretaker—and absorbs water, it begins to germinate. Germination may start within a few Earth months after planting; however, the entire germination process of a dryad—growing from seed into an autonomous individual—can take anywhere from one to three Earth years.
Once the seed begins to germinate, the testa splits and the hypocotyl pushes the headstone outwards, whence the headstone begins to take in more water and nutrients from the ground. The split testa also reveals the seed’s cotyledon.
As the rate of respiration increases, the hypocotyl extends further as it develops into a shoot. Two leaves branch off the sides of the hypocotyl which later develop into the dryad’s arms. A membrane grows around the headstone forming the beginnings of a head as radicals shoot from the membrane which develop into primary roots. The cotyledon also begin to grow, shooting upwards and providing the dryad sapling with extra nutrients to grow as it germinates. The cotyledon later develop into the dryad’s legs.
Finally, the dryad seedling undergoes morphogenesis, as the cotyledon turn into leaves and the hypocotyl leaves extend outwards. The headstone is fully encased in an embryonic head, and the testa is discarded. The roots extending from the head are bountiful. Once the testa is fully discarded and the cotyledon are fully transformed into leaves, the dryad sapling begins synthesizing its own food through photosynthesis.
As the dryad grows, its soft stem and leaves begin to harden through layers of dead cells forming a smooth, barky exterior. The legs, arms, and torso take shape. Underground, the eyes develop along with the foramina and mouth. Once the dryad is a fully developed sapling, it awakens as an autonomous individual. Caretakers are often nearby to help dig out an awakened sapling. Dryads can already speak at a rudimentary level upon their “birth”. This is thought to be due to dryads having some level of awareness while growing as a sapling. The caretakers are tasked with not only caring for the saplings as they grow, but also singing songs to them to develop their nascent linguistic skills.
Maturation
Once a dryad sapling is fully developed and awakens as an autonomous individual, the next stage of its life-cycle begins—maturation. For most dryads, this is the last and most important stage of their life, usually lasting a few centuries until death. Once a dryad awakes and begins the process of maturation, their photosynthesis processes slow down and they adopt the practice of the active consumption of other organisms. Throughout the process of maturation, a dryad undergoes many changes in morphology.
Similarly to humans, as an autonomous dryad matures, they grow taller, with a newly awakened dryad averaging one and a half to two meters tall, and a fully matured dryad averaging two and a half to three meters tall. As a dryad gets bigger, much of its shape, tissue composition, and tissue distribution change. Most notably, as a dryad ages and actively consumes other plants and animaplants, much of the energy and nutrients gained from such consumption is stored throughout the dryad’s body, most notably in the legs and hips, the parts correlating to the cotyledon from the germination phase.
Furthermore, dryads as a species are androdioecious, meaning some individuals have male flowers (with a stamen) while others have bisexual ones (with both stamen and pistil), and the sex of a flower is dependent on different phases of the dryad life-cycle. In the maturation phase of a dryad’s life cycle, male flowers blossom throughout the roots atop their head as they mature. In most Dryadic cultures, attaining one’s first flower is seen as one’s coming of age, and is usually when one is considered a mature individual.
If a dryad does not enter metamorphosis, then it will live its entire life as an autonomous individual. As the autonomous dryad ages and nears its death, its head roots cease the production of new blossoms and the remaining blossoms begin to fade and fall off. Mobility is gradually lost from the build up of layers of dead cells, until eventually the dryad loses all mobility and dies. If a dryad dies in this manner, it is usually buried by its clan near its birth tree. Over time, the roots of the birtht ree envelope the dead dryad, and the birth tree uses the dryad’s accumulated food stores for nutrients. Many Dryadic cultures interpret this phenomenon as a form of rebirth or reincarnation, in which an individual returns to their birth tree to be reborn as a new seed.
Metamorphosis
Once a dryad matures, it has the potential to undergo metamorphosis. To initiate metamorphosis, a dryad must have sufficient food stores and then be buried alive. The lack of oxygen forces the dryad’s metabolism to slow rapidly and suppresses the production of a hormone called ‘sapling hormone’. With the lowered metabolic rate and less sapling hormone around to prevent metamorphosis, a hormone called ‘blastisone’ forces the dryad’s body to undergo rapid changes. First, the dryad’s head opens up into thick roots, bestrewn with the head roots of its former phase. These roots then dig deep into the ground, absorbing large amounts of water and nutrients. The newly formed roots connect to a network of roots formed by the other birth trees of the grove and begin anastomosis. At this stage, the dryad loses its autonomy and sense of self.
Once anastomosis is achieved, the dryad undergoes rapid growth fueled primarily by its food stores and through the allocation of nutrients provided by other trees in the grove network. The dryad tree reaches maturity over the course of one to two Earth months, whence it grows from its original size of a few meters to anywhere from ten to twenty meters tall. Once mature, the newly formed tree begins producing bisexual blossoms and is known as a “birth tree” that bares the seeds of new dryads.
In all Dryadic cultures, metamorphosis is preserved for a single individual of a clan, referred to as the “Mother” in English terminology, who is the matriarch of the clan (a clan consists of all Dryads from a single birth tree). There are two ways in which a Mother may become a birth tree. The first method happens when a Mother dryad has lived autonomously for few centuries and is nearing the end of her life. Rather than dying a normal death, the Mother is ritualistically buried alive to start her own clan. The details of such rituals, as well as the way in which new Mothers are chosen, varies across Dryadic cultures. The second method is less common and happens when a birth tree is destroyed. If a birth tree is destroyed, then the Mother gives up her autonomy to become the new birth tree. The size of the newly developed birth tree may vary depending on how long the mother has lived and the amount of food stores she has built up over her autonomous life period.
Birth trees usually live for 500-600 Earth years, but in some cases may live upwards of one Earth millennium. The largest birth trees can grow anywhere from 60-100 meters tall and have diameters ranging from 10-20 meters.