I think this is a missed trope for solarpunkish scifi: manipulating plants to grow anything. Fabric for clothes growing as bark. Tomatoes with pracetamol in them. Flowers depositing certain minerals it picks up from the ground in them. Stuff like this.
Children of time had a lot of this. One factions technology is mostly based on natural processes. Their most complicated computer systems are ant based if I remember well. Great book.
The cotton plant, hemp and flax do grow fabric for clothes, and willow bark contains the active ingredient of Aspirin.
Flowers (Fabaceae) can even pick up nitrogen from the air and deposit it into the ground where it acts as fertilizer.
There are even a few textile producing trees, like mulberry, that are even better, because it doesn’t need to be spun and woven. The raw inner bark can be pounded together to form sheets of barkcloth.
I think this is a missed trope for solarpunkish scifi: manipulating plants to grow anything. Fabric for clothes growing as bark. Tomatoes with pracetamol in them. Flowers depositing certain minerals it picks up from the ground in them. Stuff like this.
Children of time had a lot of this. One factions technology is mostly based on natural processes. Their most complicated computer systems are ant based if I remember well. Great book.
So did the Discworld books!
The cotton plant, hemp and flax do grow fabric for clothes, and willow bark contains the active ingredient of Aspirin.
Flowers (Fabaceae) can even pick up nitrogen from the air and deposit it into the ground where it acts as fertilizer.
There are even a few textile producing trees, like mulberry, that are even better, because it doesn’t need to be spun and woven. The raw inner bark can be pounded together to form sheets of barkcloth.