yeah this is definitely a case of "let's do this because it's fun and try to think of a legitimate use for it later".

also you can get glowing petunias now from https://light.bio/.

I can imagine a big wall of these, or the next varietal, illuminating a space and making oxygen as well. Maybe not street lights, but definitely night lighting in buildings.

They'd make a cool walkway border, though.

Could work well enough? The idea is that you don't need to fully "light up" a street. See the photo here: https://www.isaaa.org/kc/cropbiotechupdate/article/default.asp?ID=21785

Especially if they further engineer brushes or small trees, like to glow strongest for a few hours after sundown. From my napkin math plants achieve something from 1% to 5% efficiency in converting sunlight into calories / chemical energy. I think that should be enough to provide low illumination to a small area around them.

Right now in order to put up an energy efficient streetlamp you need to dig in the earth to bury a cable (or have a big ass solar panel on top) and rely on high technology LED energy efficient lights. Now imagine just having to plant a seed. Such advanced biotechnology isn't just a question of environmentalism and resource efficiency, it also has the potential to democratize the technology needed to have higher quality of life anywhere on earth. Imho universities should be making such useful seeds that can replace complex industry supply chains and make them available for free.

So what your saying is someone needs to invent super steroids for plants or we need to get rid of winter. You're really out there but I support you and your crazy ideas!

The new generation of ff petunias glow much better, but still not bright enough.

Honestly, I'd prefer syntheisis between human and nature.

Imagine a safe and reliable wiring that can be attached to trees. We can probably find ways to breed trees that grow a certain way to function as the body of street lamps, if that makes sense.

Plant a tree, relocate after a set amount of time, attach the wiring and lightbulbs, and voila! A streetlamp tree.

Outrageous, but not anymore than any other insanity today.

"The Last of Us (but everyone glows)" sounds fine at this point.

I see now way this could possibly go wrong. These genes already come from the wild. And these plants would spend lots of the energy they produce on glowing, which is cool for us but a severe disadvantage in the wild. And deer would probably think it's hilarious to turn glowing plant into glowing poo.

It is possible they'd evolve some some kind of symbiotic relationship with animals over time. Small predatory animals like cats or ferrets might love to hunt in their light and keep them from getting eaten.

You made me remember of a period around 2012 when, due to my country being under external financial supervision, most cities and town opted to disconnect street lights to save on the energy bill.

Turns out that anywhere between 35% and 60% of all street lights are superfluous, there was no increase in insecurity and close to nobody felt the need to supplement the light outside with their own.

In my own little town, nights became quieter. Foxes, owls and other night dwellers could be seen roaming.

People complained but when met with no other option adapted and adapted fast and well. Many street ligths, previously using sodium lamps, were changed to LED, allowing for many lamps to be removed.

I would personally like to have less lamps in the streets and those with lower intensity. It could be done. This isn't London anymore.

I get it, but I have lived in places that would adopt this shit, or have serious 'non-native plant, are we sure its sterile?' concerns be what blocks it.

Bioluminescent plants exist as a commercial product. You can order them right now. I ordered some of these myself. (Though I'm terrible with plants. I didn't water them enough, and they died.)

But this isn't vaporware. You can actually order them, and I have. What is vaporware however is the idea of using these as streetlights. With the petunias I had, if you took them into a dark room and let your eyes adjust, you could see a faint blue glow off of some regions of the petunia's petals.

But these are true bioluminescent plants. It took adding multiple genetic alterations to get the petunias to carry their bioluminescence from generation to generation, but this has been done.

Yeah, I saw a documentary years ago where bioluminescent trees (as streetlights) were presented as a near fact.

B-but china bad. My oil tycoon told me so.

Woah, did you get this idea from Frank Herbert's ConSentiency / BuSab novels?

There recently was a story about clothes made from living fungi that can kind of self repair. Made me think of that again, such bioengineered types of material could be great for carpets or furniture too, if they were self cleaning and automatically regenerate any small damage.