The Real Flora Of Fake Zion

The real flora of fake Zion

Fallout: New Vegas was a formative game for me. It gathered up and solidified a lot of disparate interests I’d had for years: desert life, survival medicine and ethnobotany (what Arcade does), being dumb and causing a ruckus. 

The botany really stuck with me. Still working on the desert life. I am an herbalist but not a botanist (yet—for now I just watch Joey Santore and vibe) but plant IDing is a fun hobby. And nothing’s more fun than looking at 10 year old brown pixels and figuring out what the hell they’re supposed to be. 

Continuing my “video game plants in real life” studies (here / here), and because I can’t stop myself from writing plants into my story, here’s a non-exhaustive list of the flora unique to FNV’s Zion Canyon in Honest Hearts.

Ephedra viridis (Mormon tea)

Mormon tea, as you may surmise from its scientific name, is a main source of ephedra, and it will fuck you up. This is trucker speed. As for its common name, well here’s a long post on some of the evidence for and against the idea that Mormon settlers used this as a coffee substitute. If you would like to imagine Joshua Graham and Daniel’s speed-fueled arguments carrying on into the night, I will certainly not stop you. By all accounts, it has a nice flavor.

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this is either a really cold take or extremely controversial one but i think both pre- and post-war fallout should be weirder about food. sure pre-war we saw a lot of predictable 50's shit like tv dinners and novelty fast/frozen foods coming about, but i also think there was absolutely a continuation of the trend of deranged midcentury foods that cropped up in america. and that should continue in post-war because there's a lot of the same forces at play, except instead of the novelty of new food sources and storage methods, it's a scarcity. and frankly even by the time the bombs were about to drop, it's implied that supply chains were breaking down, rationing was kicking in, and resources were drying up in the states, so even more reason for that to still be culturally rooted down. throwing some of your limited remaining production capacity into making marshmallow fluff so people can continue to make their weird salads as is their god-given right as americans, even as cars run out of fuel and folks riot in the streets. is that anything.

there should be more insane improvisation, making casseroles or salads out of literally whatever you find that's edible. wastelanders figuring out how to make aspic again. combinations that have no business tasting good together but they manage to. sure i am also in favor of people trying to replicate GOOD old world foods and recreate things like seasonings but. more weird cooking

please help there's gotta be at least person in this fandom with historical culinary autism who understands my vision and can elaborate

someone rbing a post from me: #oh my goddd this is just like my ocs zapa and trunky

me on their blog now looking for pics of zapa and trunky:

🏜️ | 2021 redraw

ive been seeing alot of epic ship art of these two recently....i had to add to it...

How did I forget to put this here what