Seeing as the surface is inhositable, it's possible that very little except the hardiest of lichens lives there. I doubt you could get 'plants' as we know them underground due to the lack of light.
Really, though, there's no reason why an alien world would have to adhere to our divisions of plant/fungus. Perhaps they have some sort of organism that shares the characteristics of the two.
Edit: If they communicate via pheromones and vibrations, I doubt their name for themselves would be pronounceable by humans
edited 13th Feb '11 6:44:07 PM by LoniJay
Be not afraid...What if they were just given a nickname of sorts? If I remember my American History properly, The Apache indians referred to themselves as The Denae. What if these guys had the same problem?
Theres sex and death and human grime in monochrome for one thin dime and at least the trains all run on time but they dont go anywhere.^^Humans wouldn't care in the slightest, they'd simply go with whatever they liked best.
I've asked it before, but I'll reiterate since it wasn't really addressed, but have humans developed a manner to interpret the frequencies?
If so, we can base it off a bastardization of that.
But yeah, names, we need them.
edited 13th Feb '11 6:52:32 PM by AwayLaughing
I suggest Dendrovormp. Absolutely no signifigance or any real relation to our creature, but it's a name.
They could communicate with their whiskers/feelers like an alien sign language. Our nanomagitech would do this and that with vibrations in the air and something with frequencies to translate to alien.
Needs a new signature.Heavy percussion sounds, yeah. That work well. Could include stuff like rainsticks and thumb pianos. What if they had an oral tradition? Since their blind, they would have to pass on their knowledge audibly right?
Theres sex and death and human grime in monochrome for one thin dime and at least the trains all run on time but they dont go anywhere.You probably wouldn't get plants under the surface, no, because plants by definition photosynthesise. But you might get something similar to a plant.
Perhaps some things, such as plants, can only be found on the inhospitable surface, and as such are extremely valuable.
edited 14th Feb '11 3:13:28 AM by LoniJay
Be not afraid...

Possibly if there is a nearby colony, but the walls between are to unstable to just dig through?
There are too many toasters in my chimney!