With special thanks to me for the challenge.
I.
Birdfisher Moss: A distant relative of the sundew, a carnivorous, symbiotic plant that dangles in tangled sheets from the branches they're rooted in, sharing a portion of the nutrients extracted from creatures that fly or crawl into their clutches with their host-tree.
The people who farm Birdfisher Moss supplement it with forage, as though it can be made into a fine stew or salad it alone cannot sustain like grains can - though besides being eaten, it can also be worked into rope, and boiled down with certain herbs to preserve its aroma as a perfume while removing its pest-attracting property. With this rope they live among the trees, seeing getting on the ground and walking as similar to having to get out of your car to push it along.
But the forests are shrinking against the fire and machetes of those who farm more productive crops, and the people are driven out to find new ways of living, or die. Many have become adventurers - though they can struggle with flat maps and cardinal directions, they've got a strongly-developed ability to memorize and navigate three-dimensional spaces that makes them well-suited to the underworld.
II.
The Hoherb Colony: The simulacrum-nations of the Hoherb Plateau derive their sustenance, legitimacy, and existence from the stem of the eternal roots which they spring from - for the Hoherb Plateau is encrusted around a clonal colony of trees, themselves capable of cloning other things. War is conducted not through the seizing of territory or the slaughter of populations (for on the Plateau both of these are pointless) but by desecrating and destroying an enemy nation's sacred, central stem. The city of Krammethad is an innovator in this unique form of warfare. Not content with encircling its stem with a wall, or importing venomous serpents to fill the tunnels of sappers, it has armoured its stem in stone from root to highest leaf. Light is allowed to enter through balistraria-windows, and patrols are round-the-clock.
III.
Yeoman's Delight: A flower of pleasing though unexceptional appearance, and a sensitive constitution. Growing it requires a dedicated plot and gardener, and for this reason is the purview of the upper classes. The flower's value is in its nectar, which is stimulating and psychedelic (and it requires quite a few flowers to supply a party, again limiting it to those with leisure-time and leisure-land).
The land in which Yeoman's Delight is farmed practices partible inheritance, and together with the mental effects of regular use of the nectar this has led to a profusion of secret societies with elaborate codes and cosmologies, enabling inter-family conspiracy to cement alliances without marriage and eliminate rival heirs. The foulest weapon of these secret societies are the Soulless (so named for being excluded from the Registry of Souls, due to bastardry or incest or being an orphan surrendered and reported dead), locked away in wretched conditions in attics and cellars and sheds, their minds blasted by mega-doses of the nectar into fearless dogmatic servitude.
IV.
Grincies: Technically not a crop, but functionally so - aquatic insect-nymphs, kept in ponds, and fed on all manner of scraps, converting waste into protein. Their growth is monitored by village elders as a matter of life or death, as metamorphosed into adults they become swift, vicious, and terribly venomous. When it's judged that a pond is too close to maturity an algal bloom is engineered to smother it, and the whole thing is dredged out. Each season a few grincies are transplanted to a water-filled pot to parent the next generation for harvesting.
Armies are loathe to march through villages known to farm grincies - to effectively salt the earth behind them the villagers will leave the pond unmanaged, and soon enough those passing through the abandoned place will find themselves passing through a buzzing, burning hell.
V.
Chaos Grass: Each stalk is more unique than a snowflake, exhibiting extreme morphological variance with only a few common features between them all. Their riotous iridescence, while beautiful, will give you a headache if you stare too long. Their roots are sharp-tipped and eat right through stone. All the grass is a potent narcotic - when smoked, when steeped into tea, when chewed - even minute differences in preparation and consumption can induce wildly different effects, making the stuff highly addictive to those who crave novelty. On top of that, building up tolerance to chaos grass is impossible. Not too long ago people came to the Chaos Grass thinking they could make a tidy profit off it. They set up farms, shipped in workers, set up supply chains stretching across the ocean.
The grass itself seemed to reject their efforts. It concealed and provided for workers who fled the brutal conditions. It tore down walls and fed fires that razed outposts. Those who became accustomed to its smoke did not become docile consumers, but agitated and uncannily-coordinated saboteurs.
The enterprise was judged a net loss and abandoned, and many of those entrusted to oversee it were abandoned as well. The farms and their practices disrupted the grass's natural checks. Every year the grass grows out a little further.
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