More worldbuilding

[jakegrey]

In Chapter 4, there's an offhand mention of "balloon bush", a biofuel crop that has only moderate yields but can grow acceptably well in soil that's too shallow and stony to be useful for anything else. I didn't make that up out of whole cloth. It's based on Jatropha curcas, sometimes known as "bubble bush" among other things. In its current form it's not actually that good a biofuel crop -growing it on marginal land nets you marginal yields, and it needs a hell of a lot of watering- but it's only been cultivated as such for a short time and isn't really domesticated yet. Balloon bush is what J.curcas could be after a few hundred years of selective breeding and a bit of genetic modification.