Everything Starts with Plants
Fantasy World-building from the Ground Up
OK technically everything starts with minerals, geography, and geology. But most world building doesn’t really concern itself with exactly where granite is or if there happens to be a quartz deposit under the far west field. Things like mountain ranges, rivers, oceans etcetera have a lot more to do with how your fantasy world works. At map making, that’s directions.
When I say everything starts with plants, it’s because that’s where life comes from. There might be some places where there are no plants, such as in underground cavernous worlds where everything runs on mushrooms. In most cases, however, fantasy worlds have plants.
Why The Types Of Plants Matter
All food sources start with plants whether you’re talking about animals or whatever humanoids populate your world. They also make oxygen, but most world building for fantasy fiction doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty like that. It would be a bit ridiculous if we had to explain how our characters breathed.
And a lot of stories, we don’t explain what they eat either. There might be some mention of stew in a tavern, a hunk of dry bread thrown to a prisoner, or a grand feast in a king’s hall. It’s perfectly fine to default to Earth plants and just carry on with the rest your plot.
If you’re really into world building, however, plants matter an awful lot. It all goes back to a kind of ecosystem.. Is it a prairie with a lot of grasses? Then you people will probably raise cattle or some other sort of herd animal. Are there massive trees? Then every single building will be made of wood. The types of plants matter because they affect every single other thing that your created civilization does from building to beliefs to the economy to even magic.
Coming Up With Fantasy Plants
Again, it’s perfectly fine to stick with Earth plants and ecosystems. Readers are familiar with these and will feel comfortable in your world. Also, there are tons of different environments and types of plants on earth, see you have a lot to choose from. The more you know about the real world, the easier it is to create a believable and unique fake one.
So, the first thing to consider is if you should bother coming up with fantasy plants at all. I’m a strong proponent of not calling a rabbit a smeerp. False exoticism doesn’t do anyone any good. If your world has a plant which grows symmetrical rows of grain at the top, harvestable in the autumn, and regularly ground into flour for bread, there is absolutely no reason to call it bloogadi instead of wheat.
My general rule for making a plants is to keep them limited to just a few options and make them important to the world in some way. For example, I have a broadly spreading tree that lives in the southern plains of one of my books has bright red seedpods used for ceremonial food, dyes, and as an intoxicant once fermented. The propagate through linear root systems and are thus also used as navigational aids in some cases.
Why did I create these trees? Because it’s fun to create stuff and because they serve a unique purpose in the story I’m writing. Could I have used in earth plant? Sure, but then I would’ve missed out on the process of fantastical thinking.
A lot of fantasy world plants that have nothing to do with Earth ones are magical, ceremonial, or extremely rare. This is perfectly fine, of course, as the plant itself becomes an element in the plot instead of a normal part of the world. Keep in mind that it could be a heck of a lot of fun coming up with imaginary parts of the world too.