Kelutral (Home Tree)

Review: Kelutral (Home Tree)

Category: Plants

Author: Unknown, probably Eywa.

Rating: 38%

Kelutral is the Na’vi name given to a species of tree native to the moon Pandora. Although Kelutral is the name of the species as well as the individual, it is popularly used to refer to the enormous structures created when groves of Kelutral intertwine over thousands of years; the massive ‘Home Tree’ as it is known in English is more properly a Kelutral grove. These colonial structures have been known to grow to over 150 metres tall in Pandora’s weak gravity, although their bases tend to be hollow, and they take their structural integrity from a profusion of mangrove-like roots. The trunk of the structure is also supported by a number of ‘pillars’ and a helical core, each presumably a distinct plant. Specimens over 20,000 years old have been identified. Due to their large size and hollow root bole, the Kelutral is often used by the Na’vi as an ancestral residence- as is the case with the Omaticaya, Tipani, Tawkami and Ni’awve tribes. As such, the Kelutral is of great cultural significance to the Na’vi, and the two are often viewed as closely interlinked. They are hardwoods, grow in tropical climates, and are apparently evergreen.

It’s no surprise to me that the Na’vi live in Kelutrals: what else would you possibly do with them? They’re the biggest plants in the known multiverse. Sadly, this is definitely a case where more is not better: the Kelutral is just like a regular tree, only too big to effectively process for wood. It doesn’t bear fruit (if it did, they’d be a serious hazard to anyone in the vicinity), and it takes about twenty millennia to mature. Who’s got that kind of time? Only the Na’vi, who don’t trouble themselves particularly with things like technology, infrastructure or clothing. In that sense, it’s a match made in heaven- but what about other species? For 99% of species, a tree 0.2km tall is just an administration nightmare, not to mention a fire hazard.

From what I’ve seen, the Kelutral seems to look a lot like a large tropical fig, which is a relatively nice plant to look at. The problem is that the fig is most manageable in its bonsai form, and since the bonsai version of the Kelutral would be a normal sized tree, I’m not sure if this could really work. It couldn’t really be used as a decorative plant, unless you had an office the size of a country, and you wouldn’t want one in your garden because if it fell down, it would crush your entire street. If you wanted to grow one, you’d have to make like the Na’vi and live inside it. That’s not the kind of decision you usually have to make in a gardening context.

The Kelutral is, to all intents and purposes, a big, heavy, inconvenient wooden blob which sits on top of Unobtanium deposits. Although there’s no specific reason why they would occur more often over Unobtanium deposits than anywhere else, evidence suggests that they do- it’s as if they’re just trying to be spiteful. Actually, this is probably the best use for them aside from converting to Na’vi and living in them: using them as handy flags to find Unobtanium.

When you come right down to it, how good a home is a Kelutral anyway? Everyone wants to live green, and I’m pretty sure it’s carbon neutral- but heating? Shelter? You can’t just live in the open, even in the jungle. You’d die of exposure before you got through your first week. Apparently it’s full of ‘dimples’ which make good shelters, and the helical core is basically a staircase to help you move up and down the tree easily- Eywa only knows how evolution sorted that out. But even with these frankly unlikely adaptations, the rule still stands: trees don’t make good houses. I won’t even go into the issue of plumbing; suffice it to say, even Shrek has an outhouse with a little moon carved in the door. How au naturale can one go?

Undoubtedly, everyone sees pictures of Pandora and admires its iconic Kelutrals. Pandora wouldn’t be Pandora without them, and the Na’vi seem perfectly happy with them (although they’ve never known any better, so why wouldn’t they be?). There’s no problem with that. Like Mordor’s Barad-dur, though, or Florida’s Seaworld, just because it works in one place doesn’t mean it’ll work everywhere. Maybe it’s a blessing that the Kelutral needs Pandora’s gravity to grow, and wouldn’t be able to live on other planets; it’s definitely a not-in-my-back-yard kind of thing. Well done Kelutral for being the biggest documented tree in the multiverse - but you are absolutely useless to most intents and purposes, and are also a monumental fire hazard. The critical response to Home Tree is just like the moon it grows on: panned-ora.