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RickSmith

Banned

From: Vancouver B.C.

Registered: 2007-02-17

Posts: 244

Re: Plants that are useful for colonization & terraforming

Hi Everyone,
  This thread is intended to be a place to put references to interesting plants that would be useful for colonization or terraforming of Mars. 

  To start things off I suggest that the jojoba plant will be very valuable to early Martian industries.  The quote is from the link below:

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"High-pressure lubricants", you see, are not just ordinary cans of plants, animals, or petroleum-derived oil with a few extra additives thrown in. Not the really good ones. Rather, they're very special liquid waxes made up of nonglyceride esters (instead of the more common triglycerides) ... and each of these nonglyceride esters is almost entirely composed of straight-chain acids and alcohols, each of which has 20 or 22 carbon atoms and 1 unsaturated bond.

This particular wax-ester structure is not at all easy to synthesize in commercial quantities and there seem to be two-and only two-natural sources of the chemical compound: [1] sperm whales, and [2] the-you guessed it! —jojoba shrub. And with naval battles, lurking submarines, and spy ships and boats of all descriptions cluttering up the globe's oceans and sharply reducing everyone's whaling activities ... it was only natural that Allied Forces (which owned a near-monopoly on the plant) began experimenting with the harvest of the wild jojoba and the extraction of its oil. ...
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http://www.motherearthnews.com/DIY/1977 … World.aspx

  Warm regards, Rick.

SpaceNut

Administrator

From: New Hampshire

Registered: 2004-07-22

Posts: 29,428

Re: Plants that are useful for colonization & terraforming

A lot depends on not only when plants are introduced into mars missions but also into what sort of environment they will reside in.

If under domes to protect from UV rays and such then we have both choices of land or water and or course these can be further broken down into dry arid plants and those that are water plants. Lest we forget the underground damp cave growing fungus, mushrooms ect...

Plants that have medicinal properties should be also selected in addition to other crops that have a multitude of uses.

Flat Crops for Mars

Duckweed, (Lemna minor) and Water Fern, (Azolla filiculoides) both of which grow in low light...

Lichen are extremely hardy.

So with all the types that are available to introduce to mars until the eco system to support them is in place we are just chosing what will survive the conditions at the time of planting until they mature.

X

Member

From: Alabama

Registered: 2007-02-02

Posts: 134

Re: Plants that are useful for colonization & terraforming

It would probably be best for greenhouse cultivation in the early years due to its low tolerance for cold, but kudzu could be useful perhaps.  I can't attest to its uses as food or medicine, but I intend to try growing some for that purpose in the next year or so.  It does grow like crazy so it could be useful for getting rid of CO2.  It can be used for nitrogen fixation.  The article says it can be used as forage, and I've heard this is true for goats.  However, I've heard it causes cattle to get sick.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kudzu

RickSmith

Banned

From: Vancouver B.C.

Registered: 2007-02-17

Posts: 244

Re: Plants that are useful for colonization & terraforming

Altho some have suggested that oil comes from non-biological processes (so Mars might have some) I suspect that oils and hydrocarbons will be rare or non-existent on Mars.  The Jatopha plant is a hardy, drought resistant species that produces fruits that are over 1/3 oil.

Facts:
- A fast growing perennial.
- Can live for 50 years.
- Average height is 3 to 5 meters.
- Requires little maintenance.
- Requires 1/10 the water that an average palm tree does.
- Can survive 3 Earth years with no water by dropping its leaves.
- A laxative and has been used to treat fever and malaria. 
- Sap is an anti-inflammatory.
- Seeds have 37% oil content.
- Produces oil in its second year and can live 50 years.
- Bark and twigs can be made into ink, tannins and dyes.
- Oils in seed can be used for bio-diesel fuel, soap, candles & lubricants.

- Prefers well drained soil.
- Does require high - quality soil.
- Thrives in warm temperatures.

On Earth the plant is used to prevent erosion, create a living fence that livestock won't eat and to repeal rodents.  It grows wild in Central and South America and Africa.

The main problem of course is that this plant prefers a warm climate which means it will likely be a green house plant.  However, I think it likely that it will form an early industrial crop.

Warm regards, Rick.

RickSmith

Banned

From: Vancouver B.C.

Registered: 2007-02-17

Posts: 244

Re: Plants that are useful for colonization & terraforming

The two species: Salvia hispanica and Salvia columbarae might make
important food sources for a Mars colony.

Chia
Golden Chia

These plants are rich in Omega 3 fatty acids, grow in dry climates and
contain anti-oxidants.  The seeds can be eaten or the leaves can be used
like sprouts in cooking.  They are a good source of water soluble dietary
fiber.

Warm regards, Rick

Midoshi

Member

From: Colorado

Registered: 2007-07-14

Posts: 157

Re: Plants that are useful for colonization & terraforming

I found a great paper on arctic plants that can tolerate anoxia in the dark for a week and still be green and ready to photosynthesize afterward. It's titled "Anoxia Tolerance in High Arctic Vegetation" (Crawford et al. 1994). Here are a couple plants from the paper that I could immediately think of uses for:

Poa alpina............................Alpine Meadow-Grass.........possibly bred for grain
Eriophorum scheuchzeri.......White Cottongrass.............textile fibre and bog methane venting
Carex misandra....................Short Leaved Sedge...........marsh methane venting
Juncus biglumis....................Two-Flowered Rush............marsh methane venting

I'd had my eye on cottongrass for a while, but I didn't know it was anoxia tolerant as well until I read this.

These high plants come very close to (and possibly are on par with) lichen and bryophytes in their ability to tolerate low/no oxygen and survive anoxic Martian nights early on in terraformation. They're also a whole lot handier! Many of them contribute to warming the planet by venting methane produced in boggy and marshy ground as a side effect of cellulose breakdown/carbon sequestration.

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"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler." - Albert Einstein

Ancalagon

Member

From: San Diego, California

Registered: 2006-12-07

Posts: 35

Website

Re: Plants that are useful for colonization & terraforming

What about large plants? Are there any trees that would be ideal for whatever reason?

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Artist for [url=www.red-oasis.com]Red Oasis[/url]

MarsRefresh

Banned

From: Spokane, WA, USA

Registered: 2007-11-19

Posts: 48

Re: Plants that are useful for colonization & terraforming

What about large plants? Are there any trees that would be ideal for whatever reason?

The hardiest trees that grow in cold weather include the balsam poplar, subalpine fir, tamarack, and the aspen.

The aspen is interesting as it grows in large colonies that can re-sprout after a large fire or cutting. It grows quickly too.

A few isolated stands of balsam poplar grow north of the Brooks Range in Alaska, and the trees, like the tamarack, can withstand at least -65 C. That's pretty tough. Tamarack Larch can grow on drier and sandy soils than some of these other species. All of them do not do well in shady understories.

Precipitation needed for a boreal forest: 169 mm/year (44 mm additionally were lost to runoff)
(Evaporation from an eastern Siberian larch forest
Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Volume 85, Issues 3-4, July 1997, Pages 135-147)
That's less than seven inches per year. Let's say we want to grow a boreal forest in a 100 meter dome with an land area 7853 m2.
7853m2 x .169m = 1,327m3 of water per year.  1,000 kg/m3 x 1,327m3 = 1,327,000 kg of water for a year of boreal forest growth.
By comparison, filling an Olympic sized swimming pool would require 2.5 millions kg of water. So a mature boreal forest (the sample of above was from south of Yakutsk) filling a 100m dome would require filling an Olympic pool half way. But this is assuming that the structure is not a closed system. What ever % of water that was recovered from plant respiration would be deducted from this total.[/u]