34
Chinese scientists reveal glowing plants that could light cities
(www.euronews.com)
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2026
34 points (97.2% liked)
Science
20480 readers
73 users here now
Subscribe to see new publications and popular science coverage of current research on your homepage
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
Sounds like it might look cool but even if they were able to actually make enough light for a public space I doubt it would actually be more energy efficient to feed water and maintain extensive gardens down every street than to install some LED bulbs.
Even if it wasn't more energy efficient, you'd also get fresh air from the plants as a bonus, and an ecosystem developing around them. Plants also help manage heat in cities which is another bonus. Having more nature in the city may have a positive effect on mental health. Finally, you'd be massively saving on materials that go into making stuff like LED bulbs that could now be used elsewhere. If you could make the plants glow bright enough, imagine how many billions of LEDs you'd be saving in a country the size of China.
Imagine all the fertilizer and labor spent on the plants. I agree that more green space would benefit any city but I don't think a monoculture of plants engineered for maximum bioluminescence would make a healthy base for it. Public lighting and public greening are two separate problems and trying to solve both at once means not doing as good a job at either.
Using fertilizer and labor sounds better than mining and refining stuff like rare earths to me. You could probably even process waste from sewage into fertilizer creating a somewhat closed system this way. On the balance, this seems like a preferable trade off all around if you're going to need to produce light somehow. There's also no reason why this would need to be a monoculture, and they actually talk about engineering a variety of plants in the article.
I don't really see how you can make the assertion that these are two separate problems that can't be elegantly solved in this way. We'll only know whether that's the case once it's actually tried.
Yes, I think it would mostly be a really cool aesthetic gimmick, not serve a critical function. But probably no harm done in planting plants and LEDs can still be used, if needed. Also I'm not a biologist, but even if those plants inevitably spread to the wild, I assume that the impact on ecosystems from some glowing plants would be minimal. Maybe they could distract insects? But artificial lights already do that and are much brighter. I don't think they would be bright enough to affect most night time animals (owls, rodents, predators hunting rodents, etc.) if they spread to forests, or at least I hope they won't have a harder time hiding. Okay, maybe someone should look into the possible effects on a case by case basis depending on species and region.