The plants of middle earth

[alatar]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Of course, letter # 312 raises all kinds of scientific questions--enough that I'm sure alatar could pose another thread as successful as the elven snow prints one! Would Tolkien's comment that those flowers contain a light--the same light that the Simarils trapped, the Light of the Two Trees?--suggest something about the botany of Arda? We know that two trees were elevated above others. Now he suggests that some flowers were, well, closer to the original music than others? Or does all of Middle-earth's plant life sustain this special light, which now for us is gone? What does it mean to extend the special effect of the Two Trees to Two Flowers?

It had always been a dream of mine to see the Two Trees, Telperion and Laurelin. That not being possible, I once years ago considered making my own (when you study molecular and cellular biology, you tend to think thus, having glimpsed a few bars of Eru's song book.). In the lab we used luciferase to determine the amount of ATP (read 'cell's energy') in some reaction. You'd mix the stuff in a tube, give a laugh like, "Heh heh heh," (scientists are required to do this to continue the stereotype that we're all mad) then watch the contents glow. Also, as a matter of practice, and I'm sure that school children are now doing the same, we would cut and splice pieces of DNA into these little loops then trick bacteria into sucking them in and mass-producing our DNA (note that this was BP - before Polymerase Chain Reaction).

It occurred to me that the same fun could be used to get other organisms to make luciferase (would that be considered doing the Devil's handiwork?), taking the gene from a firefly and using retroviruses to lock it into the host's DNA. The host then would churn out the bioluminescent substrate and all would be bliss - unless that killed the host. My idea was to get shrubbery to do this, then one could light one's walkway without a bulb in sight. Actually watched people add genes to individual mice cells in order to make transgenic mice, so newer methods are available, but...

My professor, long suffering, countered my enthusiasm as he knew that I hadn't considered the energy requirements. Even if it were possible to have a shrub glow, how much ATP would it take to keep the thing going - scientists can be such killjoys. Trees, like a maple, produce a sweet sap that can end up on flapjakes, and so my counter counter was that if these trees could go on living after being tapped to make my breakfast syrup, then surely they could glow if we left them their sap. Also, some plants actually ate bugs, such as the Venus Fly Trap, and so that could also be the added ATP source.

It was then decided that I should get back to work as neither of us dealt with plant cells, and there were human cell lines to be cultured, and my professor always started to worry when I was outlining my plan for designing large carnivorous glowing trees (formerly I had a similar plan to get them walking, but that too required too much energy).

Anyway, while I dreamed away of one day seeing a glowing tree, nature was working on its own version, which, demonstrating that hobbits do rule, ended up being, of all things, a mushroom.

Anyway, if someone wants to take the idea and run with it - have at it, just give me an acknowledgment and let me know how fast I need run.