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Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.

The engineers at a newly started German company called Green City Solutions probably can’t match Joyce Kilmer for poetry. And they certainly can’t make a real tree. But that hasn’t stopped them from making fake trees. And now the company has installed artificial trees across London, England. Its CityTrees are designed and built to efficiently absorb urban pollution.

According to the company’s website, the CityTree is the world’s first bio-tech filter that has been able to considerably improve air quality.

A CityTree is a tower filled with different types of mosses. The spongy simple plants take in microscopic airborne particles and toxins, like nitrogen dioxide. The tall structures give off oxygen. According to design magazine Dezeen,each artificial tree is able to produce as much clean air as 275 real trees.

The solar-powered CityTrees are designed to collect rainwater. A fully automated irrigation system distributes moisture evenly to the mosses.

Green City Solutions explains on its website that the CityTrees also contain Internet-of-Things technology to gather environmental information about the trees’ surroundings. CityTrees also monitor their own performance.

The engineered trees have the ability to create an immense cooling effect all around themselves since mosses store large amounts of moisture.

London is hoping CityTrees are as well received as they have been in Oslo, Paris, Brussels, and Hong Kong. We hope so too! The only thing we don’t like about CityTrees is that you can’t climb them!

(A 3-D rendering shows a CityTrees tower in a public space. AP)