Beefplant

The Beefplant is a classification of locomotive meat plant native to the Lucidus mission, with a habitat exclusive to the Illuminatian continent. Beefplant varieties are widely cultivated for human consumption and are produced in significant volume. Some varieties of Beefplant can also be found in the wild in most regions of the continent.

The Beefplant is one of several meat plant organisms artificially engineered for the benefit of the Lucidus mission and its resulting civilization. The Beefplant was conceived using Earth-native vegetative plant tissue buttressed with genetic material from the common cattle. The resulting genetically engineered organism was a plant producing edible meat-like tissue closely resembling the flavor and texture of ground beef. The Beefplant was selectively bred to produce specific texture and flavor combinations to resemble individual cuts and cooking styles of beef that would have been familiar to early Lucidus organizers and mission crew. This resulted in the Brisketplant, the Sirloinplant, the Chuckplant, and the Flankplant.

While a vegetative material, the meat tissue of a Beefplant conveys all of the nutritive benefits of the real muscular tissue of an actual cattle, and the gastronomic experience of eating Beefplant tissue was found to imperceptibly replicate that of real beef—an imperative detail among early Lucidus mission organizers and crew who actually would have had experiences allowing them to tell the difference.

The variety of flavor and texture combinations was important for getting the original crew of the Lucidus mission to adopt meatplants as a part of their culinary palette. The Beefplant was critical to this effort and also important for the sustainability of the mission, as the keeping of real-life cattle and other animals that were normally slaughtered for human consumption aboard the mission would not have been practical and was not planned for. Additionally, mission planners had hoped to support veganism as a mainstream dietary requirement by the citizens of the intended future civilization, and the utilization of plantlife to grow beef material allowed for this eventuality. It wasn't until the acceptance of the Beefplant by the general dining public and the adoption of the Beefplant as a gastronomic tool that Lucidus leaders were convinced that complete veganism might be possible upon Lucidus and the resulting Illuminatian civilization.

Beefplants are endemic to all regions of Illuminatia and survive in diverse climates. The Beefplant is among the most common fauna observable to the casual naturalist. The Beefplant exhibits a slow, lazy grazing behavior when it locomotes and the plant appears to favor flat, broad grassy fields as a habitat when the plant reaches the locomotive phase of its lifecycle.

Most varieties of Beefplant grow a shallow root system from which the plant is easily able to detach. The territory traversed by the average Beefplant is rather small, never exceeding a 20 KLU radius. All Beefplants are non-migratory.