Subterranean Parts
The half of a plant that is never collected, collected. A herbarium sheet is almost always the part that was above ground, because that is the part that comes away with the plant when you pull it; the roots stay in the soil, or come up as a broken handful of what was actually there. Four that did come up, laid out and named. Each seed digs up four different plants rather than redrawing the same four, which is why this is the one sheet in the series whose seed row re-cuts the composition instead of only re-growing it: a root's spread is most of its shape, so when the spread changes the sheet changes with it. They are not arranged the way the fronds are. A frond stands, so the two fern sheets are columns. A root spreads, so this one is registers, and the annotations move into the left margin because that is the only place on the sheet a root is not already occupying.
Technique
`plants:root-system` on `textures:paper`, with `typography:text` for the label block. Four presets that are genuinely distinct from one another, which is not true of the fern family: `tropismGravity` varies widely across the root presets and it is the one parameter in this generator that changes a silhouette rather than its density. `carrot-taproot` is a solid vertical, `mycorrhizal-network` a fine dense ball, `mangrove-stilt-roots` an arch, and `aerial-orchid-root` an open sparse spray. A root-system layer fits its drawing to the short side of its bounds and centres it, so cell height sets specimen size and a wide short register wastes most of itself. The registers are tall for that reason, and the specimens sit in the middle third by construction, which is what leaves the margin free for the labels. Line weight is heavier than the fern sheets carry, because at the weight a frond wants, a root never reaches full ink and the sheet has no true dark in it at all.
Seeds
The same system at three seeds. The composition itself re-cuts: the geometry is derived from the seed, so masses, edges and placement all move, while the palette and the drawing language stay put.
47
913
2208
Layer stack
In paint order. Every mark in the image comes from these; there is no handwritten drawing code.
textures:paperSheettypography:textHeadingtypography:textAccession Numberplants:root-systemSpecimen — Daucus carotatypography:textCaption — Daucus carotatypography:textNote — Daucus carotaplants:root-systemSpecimen — Monotropa unifloratypography:textCaption — Monotropa unifloratypography:textNote — Monotropa unifloraplants:root-systemSpecimen — Rhizophora mangletypography:textCaption — Rhizophora mangletypography:textNote — Rhizophora mangleplants:root-systemSpecimen — Vanda sp.typography:textCaption — Vanda sp.typography:textNote — Vanda sp.typography:textColophon
Source
The complete composition. Open it in GenArt to re-render, re-seed, or take it apart.
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"id": "subterranean-parts",
"title": "Subterranean Parts",
"created": "2026-09-10T00:00:00Z",
"modified": "2026-09-10T21:09:52.107Z",
"renderer": {
"type": "canvas2d",
"version": "1.x"
},
"canvas": {
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"parameters": [],
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"params": {},
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"properties": {
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}