Turkeyplant

The turkeyplant is a locomotive meat plant of the poultry plant variety. The plant is cultivated for human consumption to an extent, but is primarily found roaming in the wild in regions often coinciding with the natural habitat of its cousin fauna, the chickenplant and the duckplant.

The turkeyplant is one of several meat plant organisms artificially engineered for the benefit of the Lucidus mission and its resulting civilization. The turkeyplant was conceived using Earth-native vegetative plant tissue infused with genetic material from the common turkey. The resulting genetically engineered organism was a plant that produced edible meat-like tissue slightly more flavorful than the commercialized turkey of Earth. While a vegetative material, the meat tissue still contained nearly all of the nutritive benefits of real meat, but without the guilt and remorse associated with eating an actual dead animal.

The turkeyplant, as planned, was among the creatures evacuated from the Lucidus mission to the surface of Neonisi upon the mission's end, however the population of the turkeyplant sent to the new world was somewhat more populous than originally planned. The average turkeyplant in present day Illuminatia exhibits a dramatically higher level of locomotion compared to its ancestors from aboard the Lucidus mission and therefore is now ordinarily categorized as fauna in common informal communication, even though the creature—per scientific classification—continues to exist as a plant, strictly speaking.

The fruit of the turkeyplant is the primary source of consumable meat plant food found on the turkeyplant. The fruit of the turkeyplant ripens only one time per Annual Unit. One turkeyplant organism is able to produce a total of just six to twelve fruit per ripening season and can produce during several ripening seasons within the lifetime of the organism, providing a harvestable source of sustenance for humans while also proving sustainable for the plant. The turkeyplant organism gleefully survives the harvesting of its fruit and usually survives the selected harvesting of its muscular extremities, although in captivity this harvesting of non-fruit material is normally avoided out of concern for the plant.

The turkeyplant is an extremely-mobile plant in the wild, detaching from its root system and alternately re-attaching to the ground to form new temporary root systems in new locations in an interchanging pattern throughout the organism's lifecycle. The organism's locomotive behaviors build a meat-like vegetative tissue in the plant's extremities. The fruit of the plant, when they develop, draw upon the nutrients that build up in the plant's motion-producing limbs, sacrificing muscular material used for locomotion in order to store the nutrients instead in the fruit. As more energy is absorbed by the fruit, the plant becomes less mobile and begins to form a root system in one location in order to more efficiently absorb nutrients and water from the soil. The water further aids in the development of the fruit while the nutrients replenish the muscular tissue of the turkeyplant's limbs.

Since the turkeyplant—like all meat plants in Illuminatia—is considered to be a plant and not an animal, Illuminatians are able to maintain a vegan diet while benefiting from the animal proteins found in the turkeyplant. The turkeyplant—being a vegetative organism and not an animal—is not sentient and does not have conscious experiences, so therefore harvesting of this plant is considered to be wholly ethical.

The turkeyplant is a primary participant in the phenomenon of the turducken plant—a fellow poultry locomotive meat plant which develops only after the fruit of a turkeyplant is infiltrated by the fruit of a Duckplant which in turn will have been previously infiltrated by a chickenplant. The resulting fruit is referred to as a Turducken fruit, an edible delight considered to be of exalted status as a culinary delicacy. This extraordinary natural process only takes place in specific regions where the natural habitats of the chickenplant, duckplant, and turkeyplant overlap. However, the Turducken fruit is also reproducible in captivity.