This article is about the Seeds. You may be looking for Flora.
By planting the seeds, spores, samples or entire specimens of Flora, the Player can either farm useful Raw Materials or decorate their surroundings and Seabases.
While some plants like Creepvine have seeds that can be picked by hand, in order to obtain most types the respective plant must be cut with a knife. In order to plant them, the player must construct a suitable structure for them, either a Plant Pot, Exterior Growbed, Indoor Growbed or an Alien Containment. Simply discarding seeds or spores on the seabed will never result in their growth.
Each plantable flora takes up a certain amount of slots, and can only be planted in some types of planters. Flora with a dark blue item symbol background can only be planted underwater, while those with a green item symbol background can only be planted in bases or on land.
In cases where the player can pick up the entire plant (eg Acid Mushroom, Marblemelon) the player can either place the whole plant or its seeds in a suitable structure. In all cases, once a plant is fully grown, the player can harvest it for multiple seeds. These can then be planted to expand the player's plant collection. After a set number of knife hits a plant will be destroyed and its space in whatever it was planted in cleared.
Creepvine is a unique case in that it has two types of "seed" which produce different results. Planting a Creepvine Sample will result in a plant with no seeds, while planting a Creepvine Seed Cluster will result in one with seeds.
Each flora has a different growth time. If a plant is not fully grown, it will display its current growth as a percentage, using the same graphic used for the Repair Tool, when the player looks directly at it. Creepvines and Bloodvines require vertical clearance to fully mature: if placed in an Alien Containment less than two stories tall, they will never finish growing.
Something to note is that edible seeds, even if rotten, still function identically to freshly picked ones and will grow fruiting plants all the same.