Bromeliad

Cover to the book

The Bromeliad is the name of the trilogy about the nomes. Truckers was the first book, Diggers was the second, and Wings was the third.

It's taken from the name for a family of plants on Roundworld that grow in the airy and well-lit upper branches of trees in the rainforest, principally in South America. This possibly parasitic plant puts out very big, long-lasting flowers that act as natural reservoirs for rainwater. A well-established bromeliad will end up sustaining its own more-or-less self-contained ecology, including small yellow frogs which live their entire life cycles in the water within the flower. These are used in Diggers as a metaphor for the lives of Nomes, especially for those who lived as a self-contained and possibly parasitic ecology within the walls and floors of the Store. However, it becomes apparent that a wider metaphor also applies here for all Nomes, who are effectively living as parasites on the margins of human society, in a world not their own, and where the slightest knock, or circumstances beyond their control altering, means they have to adapt or die. And, it could be wider, if we think that the Roundworld is too big for us, little humans...

Masklin, once in a sort of control of the Starship Swan, brings back a bromeliad flower, plus frogs, as a sort of ad-hoc Interflora gift for a very special person...