Plants and Space Colonies

[Mafty]

So in the brief Europe Arc in ZZ; Bright explains that Earth Forests are "Artificial" like in colonies, exactly what does this mean? Are the plants in colonies plastic like most plants in offices? Or are the artificially planted like in greenhouses? If the Earth is to recover, plating actual plants makes sense, but what about the colonies? Granted for air purification and farming they would need real plants , but in some cases its hinted many are fake. The trees on Libot in 0080 fall over oddly during the battle, like they're are made out of plastic, and Gundam Sentinle has Ryuu mention that the grass in most colonies is fake.

[John-Luck Pickerd]

For Earth, I think what Bright meant is that these forests didnt not naturally sprung up, but rather the result of some big government reforestation project. Basically feds are planting large number of trees to create these forests, to stop desertification, to help with co2 absorption etc. So they are actual trees, out there without glass roofs, but the trees are planted by ppl.

[MythSearcher]

So in the brief Europe Arc in ZZ; Bright explains that Earth Forests are "Artificial" like in colonies, exactly what does this mean? Are the plants in colonies plastic like most plants in offices? Or are the artificially planted like in greenhouses? If the Earth is to recover, plating actual plants makes sense, but what about the colonies? Granted for air purification and farming they would need real plants , but in some cases its hinted many are fake. The trees on Libot in 0080 fall over oddly during the battle, like they're are made out of plastic, and Gundam Sentinle has Ryuu mention that the grass in most colonies is fake.

It meant they are planted instead of naturally growing in those areas.
This is likely referencing Japan's own situation, they have imported https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cunninghamia_lanceolata
for wood because they thought shipping the wood to Japan was expensive.
but ironically, the wood became so cheap and unwanted that it became pretty much useless and not economically efficient to cut them down, but the pollen caused a large portion of Japanese to have allergies.

You also get the eco disaster of cow and sheep poo back in the days when they try to bring cows and sheep to Australia and New Zealand without bringing the clean up crew with them: https://www.rnz.co.nz/programmes/two-ce ... etle-mania

And about the grass, I'd say it makes sense to have fake grass because that way you don't need to have dirt under it and when people walk on it, they won't be bring the dirt everywhere.
Not that it will pollute other place, but likely because there's simply a limited number of dirt in the colonies and they don't want it to be spread out in the whole thing and just limit those in controlled areas.

[Mafty]

That Cunninghamia Lanceolata thing seems to actually be referenced within the show itself, as we frequently see Fir Trees in the the colonies (ie the forest seen in 0080, and part of Moussa). If that seems obscure there are easter eggs of different types of plants and animals seen in Japan and Asia in general (ie a Channa Argus(a fish found in China, Russia and North and South Korea) is seen in a tank in a classroom in F91, the Rafflesia is named and designed after a flower found in Indonesia, the Shrike is a bird largely found in Eurasia and East Asia etc).
As for soil I believe its stated that the ground is shallow within the colonies (which can be seen when the hull of a colony is breached in Zeta and ZZ)

[MythSearcher]

As for soil I believe its stated that the ground is shallow within the colonies (which can be seen when the hull of a colony is breached in Zeta and ZZ)

Well, most of the time the animators have no sense of scale, but if we look at Island 3 colonies, the soil should be 10~20m deep. Still not necessarily sufficient for large trees but so does a lot of cities planted trees in a very shallow ground.