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Old 03-11-2026, 03:05 AM   #7 (permalink)
freebeard
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It's a wonder we haven't seen more of these yet.
It's no longer a wonder for me.

CoEvolution Quarterly ran a story that began by pointing out the a wasp approaches an Oak tree, injects it with an hormone, and the tree grows a gall; which is a home that protects and feeds the wasp henceforth. It's in here somewhere (https://wholeearth.info/) Maybe an AI could retrieve it.

So why can't we be as effective as a wasp?

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Baubotanik
Baubotanik is a building method in which architectural structures are created through the interaction of technical joints and plant growth. The term entails the practice of designing and building living structures using living plants. In this regard, living and non-living elements are intertwined in such a way that they grow together into plant-technical composite structures. The Baubotanik method combines the aesthetic and ecological qualities of living trees with the static functions and structural requirements of buildings, thereby reducing the need for artificial building materials Continued in Wikipedia


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Axel Erlandson (1884–1964)
Axel Erlandson was born in 1884, the son of Swedish immigrants. A farmer by trade, he was inspired to begin sculpting trees after observing a natural graft between two sycamores. Axel began to shape trees, planting them in patterns, then pruning, grafting and bending them. He experimented with box elder, birch, ash, elm, and weeping willow, using young and flexible branches bent into loops, hearts, chairs, spiral staircases, zigzags, rings, birdcages, towers, picture frames and ladders, all held in place with a framework for several years until they were capable of self support. He sculpted some 30 trees at his farm near Turlock, California, talking to them to help them grow.
More at https://www.arborsmith.com/history

Here's something for Logic -- a paper with 60 references https://www.semanticscholar.org: A circuit analogy based girth growth model for living architecture design

They've made bridges from Ficus Elastica in India for ages.

Quote:
Inosculation

Inosculation is a natural phenomenon in which trunks, branches or roots of two trees grow together in a manner biologically similar to the artificial process of grafting. It customarily results when tree limbs are braided or pleached. The branches first grow separately in proximity to each other until they touch. At this point, the bark on the touching surfaces is gradually abraded away as the trees move in the wind. Once the cambium of two trees touches, they sometimes self-graft and grow together as they expand in diameter Continued in Wikipedia
Hawthorne is Inosculate. Plant a row of clones three feet apart and espalier and pleach the lower branches. After a decade remove two of three and you'd have a living fence covered wit thorns.

Uhh... Don't get me started, I guess.
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