Plants
1. Extreme toxicity, which either kills the animal instantly or severely inhibits the animal's ability to develop or function properly or their fertility, all three of which are directly detrimental to the animal's trajectory toward Ultimate Perfection. However, since most large herbivores tend to eat any and all plants in their grazing vicinity, there may not be any advantage to any one specific species, since if an animal eats a toxic plant in a certain place, the animal will often simply move on to another place instead of identifying the specific plant species that was inedible. This means the other plant species will experience the same diminished losses due to the absence of the herbivore.
Cicuta, or water hemlock, is one of the most toxic plants in North America. Its specific poisonous principle is called cicutoxin, and is responsible for 3-5% of livestock death in the USA alone. It only takes a piece of cicuta root the size of a walnut to kill a horse or cow up to 1200 pounds. This is an example of what happens when the animal cannot be trained by the plant not to eat it: livestock animals are domesticated and so rely heavily on their caretakers to provide the appropriate food, and cicuta grows in fields where the roots may be exposed even after mass trimming by a land tiller, or large grass seeder. In order to make up for the inability to ward off the plants natural predators because they are not always in charge of where they are pastured, the cicuta kills the animals as soon as fifteen minutes after a lethal dose has been consumed, and its extreme toxicity means that very little of the plant can be destroyed by one animal before the seizures kill it.
2. Poisonous properties correlated with palatability, which simply means that the plant may taste bad to some of the herbivores that make up the species' main predators. The problem with this is that there are often more than one predators in any certain area, and a plant will often find itself unpalatable to some herbivores but acceptable in taste to others. This does often afford it some advantage over other species with regard to loss of plant matter, especially if the plant can easily differentiate itself from other plants, such as with a fruit that looks or feels different from the other fruits around it to its predators.
The Echinops bannaticus, or the blue globe-thistle, is not at all poisonous, but is not a preferred source of food for most herbivores. To those that it doesn't taste badly to, its texture is an issue, since they are spherical and prickly. This causes more discomfort than is necessary for hungry animals to eat, and it is usually dismissed as not worth the work by the local fauna. Since the globe-thistle is part of the Asteraceae family, characterized by leaves with sharp points and prickles on the edges, typically the entire family is avoided on principle: they are uncomfortable to eat, and there is easier food to find elsewhere.
3. Aversive conditioning, which is a more gradual but often more effective way of thwarting herbivores. This method encompasses the concept of plant-animal coevolution, where a plants inedibility is learned and passed down, making it the least preferable in a cocktail mix of vegetables that a herbivore may be presented with in their natural habitat.
Galanthus nivalis, or the common snowdrop flower, is not poisonous to but is utterly despised by deer, often planted by eco-friendly gardeners and botanists who want to keep deer out of their flower beds. They grow naturally in colder regions and are the first flowers to bloom in spring, and so would otherwise be the first target of herbivores in climates where food is hard to come by over the winter season.
Plants aim to reach their Ultimate Perfection through evolutionary resistance to herbivory and by extension, a better chance at upwards and outwards growth. Ultimate Perfection for plants is found in the concept of complete lack of competition for life, both from herbivores and from other species of plant.
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- Ultimate Perfection Sam Henrickson
