The Alpine Clubmoss Dragon

Dragon Discovery Club entry #11

The eleventh dragon design voted for by the Dragon Keepers over on Patreon was a ‘leafy’ type - plant themed dragons, generally small in size with leaf shaped wings and prominent bark and/or flower details. They opted for an alpine habitat theme, and then selected the alpine clubmoss plant (Diphasiastrum alpinum) as the specific inspiration for this dragon.

How it came out:

Clubmoss was a slightly tricky choice for a plant themed dragon - in fact it turned out a lot of alpine plants presented similar problems! - in that, well, it’s not shaped like a standard plant. That is to say it doesn’t have nice big leaves to turn into wings, or distinctly textured bark to turn into scales or markings. It’s a small, relatively simple plant (and indeed seemingly not actually a moss, despite the name… or at least as far as I could tell without going too deep down the classification rabbit hole!) and so it called for a good bit of thought about how to shape the dragon.

Appearance

Feeling like I had a limited set of attributes to work with from the plant itself, I thought more about the environment in which the plant is found for this design. When I think ‘alpine’ I always imagine a windswept hillside, big blue sky overhead, a good handful of rocky outcrops showing through an otherwise low growth of grass, flowers, maybe some small bushy plants like heather… and that’s about the limit of my immediate knowledge. There’s probably some sort of eagle or other bird of prey wheeling overhead, and there aren’t many - if any - trees.

So… a small, sturdy dragon, able to quickly dodge and hide in limited cover from keen-eyed predators. The clubmoss doesn’t fit well as wings… but would this dragon need flight? It’s living amongst low scrub, with little to no arboreal movement, and birds big enough to eat it watching overhead! Ok, we can sensibly forget about wings then, and instead focus on camouflage - at which point a cluster of straightforward clubmoss-like growths along the back feels just right.

For a while I considered the idea that this dragon might be a kind of ambush predator. I could give its body a raggedy fringe to help it settle amongst the ground foliage, and rather than horns I could give its face a fringe of ‘clubmoss’ - it might sit still, waiting for insects to land on its ‘beard’ before snapping them up in wide jaws.

Although I was kind of fond of this beardy version of the dragon, I decided to stick with an upright head crest or fringe instead since most pictures of clubmoss I found showed it growing in distinctly upright clumps.

When it came to the body, I decided to go for a fairly smooth scaled look with blotchy markings to aid camouflage amongst the scattered rocks and scree of my theoretical hillside. A shorter, stockier overall body shape and strong claws for scrabbling over the hillside finished the look.

Habitat & Behaviour

Here’s the snippet from the DDC info card:

“These tiny dragons are found living amongst the scrub and rocky scree on windswept mountain slopes. It is thought they have lost the capacity for flight – despite a number of anecdotal stories claiming otherwise – although there remains debate as to whether they can in fact glide short distances in order to dodge the birds of prey often found in the same habitat.

Such behaviour has yet to be reliably recorded, but they are certainly known to be exceedingly fast moving when startled.”

…and some further observations:

Clubmoss dragons are likely omnivores, eating a variety of insects and plants, perhaps the occasional small bird egg if they can find them. They live in small family groups, which allows for one dragon to always be keeping watch for predators - or for other clubmoss dragons. They may be small, but in such a rugged environment these dragons have become fierce defenders of their claimed territories and the whole group will quickly muster to drive off invaders.

I’ve included a few work in progress shots and some thoughts about the painting process below for paid subscribers.