Plants of the Jungle [Monster Thursday]

Have you ever watched your players journey through a jungle and just wish the environment would kill them? Well, today we go over some of the more deadly plants that explorers could face while exploring deep jungles.

Ash Bush (CR 2) What's this? A burning bush... I'm sure I didn't get inspiration for this from anywhere... This bush easily catches on fire, but not to burn creatures alive, but rather to set the jungle on fire so it can feed on the ash. Also, that'll teach those metagaming murderhobos to think that all plants are vulnerable to fireball.

Blisterberry Bush (CR 3) What's better than a poisonous bush? A bush that shoots berries of poison at creatures that then explode. This... great?... hunter relies on its ranged options to kill prey so that it can find on their delightful rotting corpses.

Dragonscale Trap (CR 5) It's a flytrap... for large sized creatures! This one happens to have brilliant green scales (probably to help blend into the green jungle) and walks around the jungle looking for its next meal.

Lily Pad Monster (CR 7) This powerful plant resides almost completely underwater, relying on its lily pads to help it photosynthesize and breathe for it. When creatures get close to the water's shore, it shoots its vines out, grabs them, and then dunks them in the water where it attempts to drown them, but not so it can eat them but so that the fishes around it can... Then it subsists on delightful fish manure.

Zombie Fungoid (Template) This monstrous plant is a bit different than the rest. There isn't a single plant to murder, but rather the party must fight creatures that have been taken over by the fungus. This was inspired by ophiocordyceps unilateralis, commonly known as zombie-ant fungus, where the fungus takes over the body of the creature and then releases chemicals and enzymes to drive the creature insane and attack other living creatures all so that the parasitic fungus can spread. I include a lizardfolk that has had the template applied to it as an example.