As you wish.
(Oh, come on, you and I both know you set that one up far too well, I had to take it.)
But really, I don't think they exist.
RAHRRR!
Jason72 said
And we have a winner!
Well spotted sir.
Why bother with a "real" plant? CrHe isn´t limited like that, or else hoards of spells wouldn´t work(just look at the ones in the main rulebook).
Combine Rego and Creo, start from a real tree and make it grow beyond what it normally would, as long as you don´t try to make it do something it COULD not do naturally, you don´t need Muto. So, basically, with some concentration, you should be perfectly capable of having a tree grow up into a living skyscraper if you want, using Cr/Re, Cr to make something grow as far/long as you wish, Re to shape it.
If you need it do something weird during the spell, add Muto.
Although you have to go to California for the biggest tree in the world, you don't have to go to California to find really, really big trees.
cathedralgrove.eu/text/08-Tree-Websites.htm for Europe (and some other locations)
simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baobab for Africa
And don't forget that tall trees can form very tightly walled, circular groves, with an interior area suitable for all kinds of things. It would require the Group target (or perhaps, appropriately, Circle) rather than Individual, though.
That's what they want you to think...
Here is a list of the tallest trees known today. Their species may be known in ME (with explanations). All quotes from Wikipedia.
Yellow Meranti (Shorea faguetiana): 94.1 m (309 ft), Danum Valley, in Sabah on the island of Borneo ("According to ancient Chinese (977),[11]:129 Indian and Javanese manuscripts, western coastal cities of Borneo had become trading ports by the first millennium [...] the area was a thriving trading centre between India and China from the 6th century until about 1300").
Entandrophragma excelsum: 81.5 m (267 ft) at Kilimanjaro ("The mountain may have been known to non-Africans since antiquity. Sailors' reports recorded by Ptolemy mention a Moon Mountain and a spring lake of the Nile, which may indicate Kilimanjaro; [...] Before Ptolemy, Aeschylus and Herodotus referred to "Egypt nurtured by the snows" and a spring between two mountains, respectively.").
Hopea sangal or Sindora wallichii ("The Changi Tree, also known as The Time Tree, was a 76-meter legendary tree of Singapore. The species of the tree is unclear, but it was either Hopea sangal or Sindora wallichii. [...] The Changi Tree started appearing on maps at around 1888. The tree was a major landmark due to its height. In February 1942, during World War II, the tree was cut in order to prevent the Japanese from using the tree as a ranging point.").
Norway spruce (Picea abies) reaches 62,26m according to www.monumentaltrees.com. Wikipedia is more prude ("The Norway spruce grows throughout Europe from Norway in the northwest and Poland eastward, and also in the mountains of central Europe, southwest to the western end of the Alps, and southeast in the Carpathians and Balkans to the extreme north of Greece. [...] Norway spruce is a large, fast-growing evergreen coniferous tree growing 35â55 m (115â180 ft) tall and with a trunk diameter of 1 to 1.5 m (39 to 59 in).").
Not all the tall trees live in California ! Now we need a tree which is both tall and broad. It seems to not be supernatural, even in old Europe.
I would like also to propose hazelnut tree: they don't grow tall or wide, but several can sprout side by side, in a tight, almost continuous trunk made of half a dozen trees (we had one - or six - in our garden). So it is not too much of stretch that with a little bit of magic, you can grow them in walls. Advantage: they can make straight-ish wall and accommodate all kinds of shape and because they don't grow that tall, they are probable better to blend into a forest. Disadvantage: they are not suitable for tall, high from the ground housing, nor for "housing in the trunk", similar to Conjuring of the Mystic Tower.
An Herbam specialist with knowledge of trees and plants can leverage the natural shape and characteristic of plants and trees to achieve very efficient design, almost natural looking: acacia has naturally sharp and hard thorn, poison ivy has a natural contact poison, even common urtica can grow in large, unpleasant-to-cross bushes. Enough to keep away mundane threat without drawing attention contrary to heavily fortified or obviously magical looking castle.
Skunks and platypus and porcupines exist in our world and I would be unconvinced by arguments that argued that since they exist in reality, they should be able to exist in mythic Europe.
Rather than considering whether we can think of examples of trees, you should determine what someone in Mythic Europe would consider the essential nature of a tree, if being a tree of that size would contradict that essential nature. The essential nature of mice is to be small, no giant mice without muto, but I would think it is the exxential nature of mature trees to be big, and being a little bigger than what is usually seen is only being more perfectly partaking in the form of tree, which is the realm of Creo anyway.
Are you claiming that animals of that size could not exist in Mythic Europe?
Pretty much the whole of the argument is about what size or at least height trees can achieve, based on the structural strength of wood. There's no presentation that sequoias exist.
Mammals certainly exist, although not by that name, and of the size of your examples - and the idea of an animal that sprays a noxious odor wouldn't be casually dismissed. This is a world where there are bonacons, which do indeed spray a noxious semi-liquid. Still, I wasn't claiming that skunks exist, although I'll certainly assert that a similar animal with a defensive squirt could exist. It would probably be regarded as a weasel or wolverine.
I can see an argument that there are no marsupials, or at least no reason to expect marsupials ... although if a platypus were presented to magi of Mythic Europe, I think they'd deal with it as some kind of very strange bird, a flightless waterbird, furry like a bat (which is itself a bird in ME).
Porcupines are extant in the Old World, including Europe, and presumably Mythic Europe as well.
In case people find it relevant: the ballpark figure is that the volume of a tree's wood is contained about 50% underground in it's roots. This differs up or down by around 10%, depending on the type of tree in question.
Then it´s an invalid argument, because it´s quite possible to build modern skyscrapers with wood. And doing it magically would allow for all sorts of ways of doing it better, or just include Muto and optimise it from the start. Just being able to do it all as a single piece will improve structural strength a LOT.
edition.cnn.com/2016/04/26/desig ... hing-fire/
sciencemag.org/news/2016/09/ ... skyscraper
A Douglas fir tree is a marvel of natural engineering. The trunk, made mostly of slender dead cells each a few millimeters long, can reach heights of 100 meters. It's supple enough to sway in windstorms without snapping, yet strong enough to support its weightâup to 160 metric tons. Kilogram for kilogram, a wooden beam made from this fir is 3.5 times stronger than steel.
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