The Undergardener

Rhizoma custos

Under cultivation

A root system beneath the Institute that tends the plants upstairs, though nobody planted it and nobody has found where it ends.

Collected at: Beneath the Institute, east foundation
Date: 1911
Collector: Founding society (attributed)
Anomalies: RestorativeUnstable genomeMimicry

Sequenced fragment

ATCGGCTAXXXXXXXXGATCXXXXXXXXTTAGCCGAXXXXXXXXCGATTAGCXXXXXXXX

60 bpGC 50%32 anomalousEvery eighth base is unreadable. The pattern has not changed since the first sample in 1911.

Description

A root system of unknown extent beneath the Institute’s east foundation. The roots are pale cream to ivory with smooth, faintly wrinkled bark, finger-thick where they enter the basement and branching into hair-fine threads at their tips. No shoots, leaves or flowers have ever been found.

Observations

The roots break through the basement walls in at least nine places and disappear into the floor. Where they approach the pipes beneath the Glasshouse they thin into hair-fine threads that wrap the plumbing like a hand around a wrist.

Genetic analysis

Samples taken a decade apart are identical, including the unreadable positions — one in every eight bases, as regular as a heartbeat. Its genome contains fragments matching, at one point or another, every specimen ever catalogued upstairs.

Cultivation

It does not need us. The question of whether we need it has been raised at three staff meetings and minuted at none.

Effects

Specimens in the Glasshouse recover faster than they should. Broken pots are found mended. The basement is always slightly warm.