Noovleann Tree

Noovleann Tree
Image from Steve Bowers
Tree-like organisms which hang from dynamic orbital rings at various heights above a planetary surface.

A Noovleann Tree is a biological artwork/construct supported by a dynamic compression member ring, a ring suspended above the surface of a planet at an arbitrary height. The ring is held at an altitude of a few tens of meters to several kilometers, depending on the world and desire of what the artwork looks like. The ring encircles the entire planet, going around at the equator. Growing on this pipe in the sky is a modification of the Mother Wood tree. This plant grows on the pipe like a strangler fig. It gathers rain water in the same manner as Mother Woods, using round funnel-like leaves. Width and height of the tree body itself varies depending on what the artist engineers it to be. Different sizes or speeds of dynamic compression members are used depending on the mass of the tree.

Noovleann Trees have many variants with specialised features; among these are the ability to grow firework rockets and launch them on command, special structures that grow and drop spheres made of celluloid (that are set on fire by small jets of burning methane as they leave these growths) and fruits of any type you give them the genes for. Bioluminescent fruits and growths are also common features. The larger ones can have biological beings, sophont and otherwise, living on and inside them.

Some Noovleann Trees are engineered to support secondary features on the world below them. They can send down pseudoroots to the surface of their world and into bodies of water that they happen to pass over. The pseudoroots create a structure for algaecoral, coral, barnacles and other marine life to grow on, allowing a reef community to grow even where the ocean floor is many kilometers down. These pseudoroots don't collect water or nutrients, this is the function of the funnel-like leaves. The pseudoroots do however give a way for gengineered arthropods or synsects who carry mud from the ocean floor to climb up to the tree to deposit their load. For the sections of the tree above land(which sometimes are engineered to have pseudoroots growing down to the ground) where non-flying arthropods can't climb up to the tree on the pseudoroots, the tree gets its nutrients from flying arthropods, flying synsects, roosting animals' feces, vomit, dead bodies, shed skin, lost and wasted food and depending on the environment a very small amount comes from airborne dust.

The first Noovleann Tree was built/grown in 2,022 a.t. by the Shepbra artist Sivanya *click* *click* Noovleann, soon after the construction of the earliest dynamic orbital rings.

Other Noovleann artworks are Noovleann Seas/lakes (depending on being fresh or salty water) orbital eclipses and land ribbons. More recently, more than one Tree has been built above certain planets, forming a grid like pattern; a dense grid of Noovleann trees may be joined together to make a living supramundane world.

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Development Notes
Text by John EddsInitially published on 28 December 2005.