Yes, the D&D world identifies mushrooms as plants
historically, the word “ plant ” referred to both fleeceable plants and mushrooms. The microscopic fungi creditworthy for sealed diseases would n’t have occurred to people as something that could exist until the microbe theory of disease gained prominence ( former nineteenth hundred ). D & D means “ plant ” in this older feel .
This can be hard to stomach. I enjoy D & D in part for the mechanics ; I like picking apart the details of how things work and figuring out whether a given machinist applies in a given situation .
Within the concluding several decades, the very intelligent people who make careers out of studying plants and fungi reached an consuming consensus that fungi are actually more closely related to animals than to plants. They obsessed over the fine details of how things work, and they figured out that plants and fungi are governed by wholly different sets of mechanics, to the point where it ‘s barely wrong to call a fungus a plant or frailty versa.
back up, though. Spells like “ Speak with Plants ” do n’t say “ members of the plant kingdom ”. They plainly refer to “ plants ”. The Player ‘s Handbook is a non-scientific document. It never says what definition of “ plant ” to use. several things about the 5e rules point to an older, less-informed understand of plants .
Myconids
Consult the Monster Manual ‘s definitions of animal types .
Plants in this context are vegetable creatures, not ordinary flora. Most of them are ambulatory, and some are carnivorous. The quintessential plants are the shambling pile and the treant. Fungal creatures such as the flatulence spore and the myconid besides fall into this class ( Monster Manual p. 7 ) .
I ‘ll point out that, by a scientific definition, none of the monsters listed are plants or fungi. As we understand them in the actual worldly concern, plants and fungi lack muscles and cardinal nervous systems. A scientist would see a shambling knoll or myconid and wonder, “ How does it move ? How does it make decisions ? ” many research projects later, the scientific community would revise its definitions ( with the details depending on what inquiry revealed about how these creatures functioned ) .
There are two takeaways here. First, you ‘re fair looking for trouble oneself if you try to get besides scientific about what words mean in D & D. Second, this is an example where the rules explicitly do n’t make a distinction between plants and fungus .
This does n’t amply answer your wonder, though. Speak with Plants targets ordinary flora, whereas the quote passage explicitly says it ‘s not talking about ordinary flora .
We don’t have the right word
Pretend I ‘m right — “ Plants ” in the enchantment Speak with Plants refers to the non-locomotive, macroscopic organisms attached to the surfaces of wilderness areas ( american samoa well as some other places ). What ‘s the decline catch-all word for that ? If you limit yourself to scientifically-precise words, I do n’t think we have one. I think this is a case where, rather of taking half a page to write out what does or does n’t count as a plant, the rules-writers figured it would be less gawky and more fun to use the dim term and let the DM exercise delicacy .
How In-Game Characters Would See It
D & D takes place in a bygone technological era, second before people distinguished between plants and mushrooms .
You arm your troops with swords, pole arms, and bows. Full denture armor is still the best defense available. There are no steamer engines ; coal is used to heat stuff, not to make machine parts move. Assume a twin level of sympathy of mycology. From the Wikipedia page :
historically, mycology was a branch of vegetation because, although fungi are evolutionarily more closely related to animals than to plants, this was not recognized until a few decades ago .
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The Greek philosopher Theophrastos of Eresos ( 371-288 B.C. ) was possibly the first base to try to systematically classify plants ; mushrooms were considered to be plants missing sealed organs .
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The Middle Ages saw small promotion in the body of cognition about fungus. Rather, the invention of the print bid allowed some authors to disseminate superstitions and misconceptions about the fungus that had been perpetuated by the authoritative authors .
The get down of the mod old age of mycology begins with Pier Antonio Micheli ‘s 1737 publication of Nova plantarum genus .
sure, you could declare that yours is a earth where people actually do understand the remainder between plants and mushrooms. By nonpayment, though, I think it ‘s understand that characters in D & D have a pre-industrial-revolution reason of science .
How Gary Gygax et al. saw it
In a exchangeable vein to the previous point, it ‘s unclear to me whether the “ Mushrooms are n’t plants ! ” idea would have reached the writers of the first-generation AD & D source books. Sure, 5e is n’t 1e, but 5e does draw its inspiration and terminology from former editions. Calling a fungus a plant feels like a linguistic atavistic nowadays, but it ‘s not like the 5e writers invented the atavism from nothing ; they borrowed it from an earned run average when it was n’t so much of a atavistic.
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What’s the point of a druid?
Druids love nature. Spells like Plant Growth and Speak with Plants give druids a tangible benefit when they ‘re in wilderness or agrarian areas .
The ecological details of The Underdark are unlike : rather of green plants, The Underdark has mushrooms. Despite this, The Underdark still has wilderness and agricultural areas. Does a druid ‘s magic trick recognize a battlefield of mushrooms as being relevantly exchangeable to a field of barley ? I believe the answer is “ yes ” .
The Player ‘s Handbook explicitly says that a Circle of the Land druid can be initiated in The Underdark ( PHB p. 68 ). The Underdark has druids ; druids should function by rights in The Underdark .
