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Crawling Boom Creeper (Praemium Motus)

The crawling boom creeper is unique among boom creepers because it actually hunts its prey. While most boom creepers wait for an animal to come close to it, and then explode when it is close enough, Crawling boom creepers actually hunt their prey. To do this, they grow extremely fast, about three times as fast as bamboo does on Earth!

The rapid cellular division responsible for this is extremely taxing, so crawling boom creepers must find prey as soon as possible. They hunt at night, as that is when most of their prey is sleeping. During the day, crawling boom creepers remain rooted in the soil, photosynthesizing and storing all of the energy produced for their nighttime work.

Crawling boom creepers detect their prey with special sensors that detect the gas emissions of the prey. As they crawl towards the prey, the portions behind the crawling boom creeper die off, or split into a new specimen. If such a split occurs, the new plant will sit and do nothing but produce and store energy for a week before it begins its nighttime excursions.

Once prey is found, the crawling boom creeper will explode, usually killing or severely injuring the prey with the shrapnel damage from hardened patches on it. The now dead prey will then serve as an energy rich meal for the spores as they store energy for when they set out to find prey of their own. If they prey animal is only injured, then the spores will wait until it dies of its injuries, or until it is killed by a predator.

The entire life of a crawling boom creeper plant revolves around storing enough energy to find prey. It is unknown how this evolved. The current theory is that there was a time when animal life was scarce, so one species of boom creeper developed limited mobility to find the scarce prey, which then evolved into the more efficient form you see today. Because animal life is now much more common than it might have been when this species first evolved, crawling boom creepers are much more common. In fact, the boom creeper family in general is much more common than it was in the past.