HOW EXAGGERATION CAN MAKE MANY OUT OF ONE
TL;DR
Roadsides are often a great place to encounter plants you would not expect to find. In the above photo is a small plant of Brassica napus, a.k.a. canola. It should be flowering by now, but it likely got trimmed down, so will have to make a second attempt.
Canola is one of the most important plants grown for seed oil, and simultaneously a source of characteristic nectar, which gives the canola honey characteristic buttery aftertaste. What is even more remarkable is that it belongs to the famous Brassicaceae family, which includes: cabbage, brussel sprouts, cauliflower, broccoli, kohlrabi, kale... And what all those species share is a common ancestor, which looked something similar to the canola above, but probably more shabby, smaller and living in the wild. The species mentioned share another common trait -- they were all cultivated to exaggerate, or strengthen, particular parts of the plant.
By countless sessions of trial and error, the early farmers took a single plant and exaggerated a selected part of it. Cauliflowers and broccolis are mainly flowers, kale, cabbage and brussel sprouts are mainly leaves and stalks, kohlrabi is the root, canola gives oil and greens. From a worldbuilding perspective this is a dream come true. Just take a single specie and make several variations of it, exaggerating and featuring one or two parts of it. Adding a small twist to make it stand out won't hurt, e.g., red cabbage as opposed to white cabbage.
A similar thing can be observed with celery, parsnip, carrot, dil, cardamon. They all belong to the same family. Even if they share a common ancestor in a very very distant past; the looks are close enough to make the worldbuilding around the shape possible. In this particular family are a lot of toxic lookalikes, e.g., hemlock. Another way the "let's play evolution" game can be taken to another level.
Species are not the only things one could expand that way. This scheme can be used on cultures, religions, fashion, food... One could imagine that the multitude of sandwiches, hotdogs, hamburgers, kebabs have their origins in the flat bread being filled with good stuff. Could it share a common ancestry with dumplings, who are also starch encasings of the good stuff? Maybe...
Drawing parallels for the Summer Camp will be easy as well. A single species and perspective on how to look at it, even name it is the very definition of change. Refuge can be a place where the original plants live unperturbed as they have for thousands of years or maybe people who took a cultivated specie, belief or both (entangled in a tradition ritual) to save it from decay. Where one thing thrives, very often the other/others must make room for it and either be extinct/decay or evolve with it. This again makes for a story material with conflict being a transition point/glue between the old and the new.
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