It was asked of me what I could make
And so the people were fed
It was asked of me what I could make,
And so things were written
It was asked of me what I could make
And so the people were warm at night
But when asked more of what I could make,
There was nothing to be found.

What am I?

Something that can be found on Google?

A hotel? Shelter?

Cotton?

nope

Clay

nope

sheep

no

A Plant?

closer than the other guesses

but no

its a tree.

yes, yes it is

bad luck there dek..

Hey!!! Isn't a tree a plant??!?!

grrrr

heh. almost.

For my money, a tree doesn't fit the last couplet very well.  There are many, many things one can make out of wood.

True Dr d, but once you've burnt it there isn't a lot left to make anything with.

Yeah, as the riddle goes, the people are fed by eating the fruit, then they write on paper made from the bark, then they burn the wood, and then there's nothing left.

"Plants" as a group don't all have fruit or bark or wood... not all trees have fruit, but meh

I didn't really see it as a sequence of events; still doesn't sit well with me especially since paper is typically made by pulping wood.

Well this was bark paper.

Which brings me to what else is eating me about this riddle.  Since all of this is happening to one tree in order for the final couplet to make sense, it has got to be a specific type of tree.  Not all trees have edible parts and stripping the bark off of most trees to make paper does not seem feasible.  So what type of tree are we dealing with?

The Chinese originally mad paper from the bark of the Broussonetia papyrifera tree. It has small red fruits on it, but they are only eaten by birds.

drdec, I didn't write the riddle, I just posted it... and anonymous solved it (and dek came close) so it served its purpose.

You're guess was sheep, which fits keeping people warm and fed, but how do you write anything with a sheep by-product?

Plus you'd probably have at least some bones left afterwards, which you could use to make something else.

I was thinking of sheepskin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diploma).  I wasn't arguing my answer was better I was trying to understand the riddle.

If you want to get picky about being able to make something else after the uses, you could probably think of a couple of things you can make after burning the tree with the ashes.  If you want to be really creative, you could make smoke signals.