Your challenge is to have some nation, civilization or culture adopt something which grows on, or from, trees- leaves, bark, oil, seeds etc- as legal tender, as the basis of its monetary system. What would such a civilization look like?
Cocoa beans? They seem to have been used as a sort of currency throughout Mesoamerica before the Spanish arrived.
No they didn'tThe Dutch based their entire economy on tulips once
that's not exactly how it ended. It ended the way all bubbles ended.until someone pointed out, while pretty, they're useless,
No, it didn't.and their economy collapsed basically overnight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_maniaGoldgar's study of archived contracts found that even at its peak the trade in tulips was conducted almost exclusively by merchants and skilled craftsmen who were wealthy, but not members of the nobility.[40] Any economic fallout from the bubble was very limited.