IMO this is easy to explain by people's infatuation with novelty. Say you took that tree, engineered it to grow to 2 feet tall with bio-luminescent leaves and p

IMO this is easy to explain by people's infatuation with novelty. Say you took that tree, engineered it to grow to 2 feet tall with bio-luminescent leaves and people would be fascinated by it... until that became old-hat, then it'd be ignored again.