Plant Generation Software Packages (Old/Historical)

Tool Description Pros Cons Pics
Virtual Plants / Floradig at the department of Computational Science for Plants, Animals and their Interaction (Australia) Software for digitizing the growth of real plants.  Used for Australian agriculture: cotton, bean, Stylosanthes, Parthenium, sorghum, young red cedar.    
AMAP (1990s) French software package split into several packages: Genesis, Orchestra, Nurseries, Softimage/Maya plug-ins. Large plant database, includes scientific and botanical knowledge.
Includes a growth
engine.
Provides terrain creation with area delineation based on GIS data.
It's unclear whether and how you can create your own species.
No longer sold, the technology was transferred to Bionatics

Tree Designer An old plant modeler that outputs to 3DS and  POV-Ray. Shareware for Win32, uses OpenGL. all the examples look like the same tree
4Dvision - "Nursery" Leaves look small and more realistic, trunks thinner   Only very simplistic models available, pretty much stuck with the samples you get.
Only a 3DSR4 version was ever available, appears to be dead and gone
Lace
(no longer online?)
Package of Java classes for L-system modeling extended to handle particle systems and quilt designs. Looks very nice.
Models natural plant growth.
Source code available
L-system language used is not abstract enough. (includes explicit function calls within the rules).
LParser One of the first public domain L-system packages. Runs under MS-DOS. Provides source code. Output for POV-Ray and Rayshade. Very primitive and VERY slow.

plantlife