Why are there no forests or thriving trees?

Animals and people mutated to adapt to radiation but not trees and fauna? Evolution dictates that things adapt to thier environment over time to survive.

Fallout NV had a vault with some plants and a few in the dlc.

Where are the mutated plants in fallout 4? On a side note where are the fish? Did the mirelurks eat them all? I was hoping to fish at my settlement and cook them up around the campfire.

Nuclear winter perhaps? Sheer volume of debris in the atmosphere could potentially block out the sun, preventing photosynthesis etc, some plants however, don't require sunlight, like mushrooms etc.

Crops seemed to survive though.

There is both mutated and wild plants.

Mutated plants? Like the Mutfruit, Razorgrain, Tatoes, Tarberries, Hubflowers, etc?

As for full-grown trees, I like to think that the nuclear apocalypse changed the local climate so much that it can't support the plant life it used to. Has the Commonwealth gone through total desertification?

Also, remember that you pop out of the vault at the end of October.

Which is why I'm keeping my fingers crossed that Vurt or someone equally talented will make a flora overhaul MOD that will include trees with foliage, turning the Commonwealth into an autumn wonderland.

I guess I secretly want some deadly trees

The crops are all mutated just not large trees. Mods will help though.

You can find fish washed up on the beaches that look like they just died the minut before you got there (can't pick them up though) and on one quest I met a guy fishing at a pond, so yeah it's kind of weird that there are none to be found if you go in the water.

On a side note, has anyone actually found anything at all in the water? I expected to be able to find some cool stuff down there considering that there's a water breating perk, but so far after 40+ hours of playtime I haven't found a damn thing that could be picked up. I have a hard time understanding why the aquaboy perk is even in the game at this point (completely useless perk)

Not sure, but judging by the mutant dolphin corpses I've seen and the assorted mirelurk breeds (queens = Godzilla), I'm pretty glad I haven't.

Considering I see dead leaves all over the place there clearly has to be living trees. It only takes a year or so for them to disintegrate entirely.

I have a feeling that we'll start seeing the things found in the water soon, especially with the Aqualad/girl perk. People will swim all over.

This explains why there are no trees, atleast on the east coast. Also its speculated that there are indeed living trees, because you can see autumn leaves o the ground sometimes.

https://www.reddit.com/r/falloutlore/comments/3supdk/would_trees_have_grown_back_more_200_years_after/

the problem is - no photosynthesis -> no food ( food chain would collapse ) and oxygen would disappear from the atmosphere within a few decades because of chemical reactions. btw,, mushrooms are not plants

According to the Fallout lore, it wasn't just the nukes that killed everything - it was something like four days of irradiated fallout rain that fell afterward, that devastated the surviving flora and fauna.

Of course, even the idea that dead tree trunks would still be standing after 200 years, is laughable. They would have decomposed. Animals also wouldn't have mutated so severely in a mere 200 years.

The answer? The dead trees are there, because they look good visually. Same reason they probably have dead leaves on the ground - because otherwise everything would just be a brown dirt texture. Living trees aren't out in the world, because Bethesda are going for a bleak, scorched wasteland look.

I try not to go too far down the rabbit-hole of lore in fiction - especially visual arts - because more often than not things look a certain way for aesthetic reasons, and not as entirely logical outgrowths of the world being portrayed. You'll drive yourself crazy trying to come up with post-hoc justifications that comport with the lore, when the creators didn't do so in the first place.

Or they die forever. Successful adaptation is not guaranteed.

Just a note, but the vast majority of the Earth's photosynthesis isn't from trees, but from plankton in the ocean. Most photosynthesis would not be stopped by nukes dropping in the ocean because no one is going to target the ocean. The changes to the ecological system would have unknown effects, though, but it is certainly within the realm of possibility that any changes didn't completely undermine the necessary photosynthesis for the air to remain breathable.

Just because we see dead-looking trunks above ground doesn't mean the trees are actually dead. It is very likely that some of them are still alive just as trees today are alive during the depths of winter.

One type of tree that is specifically named in FO4 is maple trees. There are many varieties, of course, but in general maples are very hardy trees and it is not beyond belief that some would survive in the wasteland.

There are ginkgo trees that survived ground zero Hiroshima, right?

I suspect without trees the oxygen content would be too low to support life. There was a mod in Fallout 3 on PCs that populated the wasteland with trees which would probably be the case. Look at Chernobyl. It's atmospheric but I don't think it really make sense. I'm not the right kind of scientist to know but it makes no sense to me. Still a fun game though.

Answer A: Put leaves on the trees, people will complain that it's not looking post-apocalyptic enough.

Answer B: Take leaves off the trees, people will complain that it's not green enough.