February 18, 2014

The palm trees you see on this pageare another holdover from the era of the Gene Lords. By the early twenty-second century most of the old-style city parks or trees were dead, victims of climate change, disease, or both, and new plantings were doomed to failure. The solution (or, rather, a solution pursued by some scientists within the United American Republic) was a series of new, evergreen, disease-proof plants that could take on drought, cold, and heat with equal ease. In the case of the palms they were successful, for a definition of success that includes 'useless for food, shelter, or fuel, but spread like wildfire, wiped out any competition, and proved unkillable by any means including fire by generations of increasingly frustrated landscapers.'

They are quite pretty, though.