The importance of plants... Not just food
Why you should bother learning about plants
Plants are sessile organisms. They don't move. That's the biggest difference between plant and animals.
Despite the fact that they can't move, plants are of incredible importance. They are a major source of oxygen and balance the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere (due to the carbon cycle. Plants release carbon dioxide in respiration).
Plants are also chemical factories. Some of the chemicals they make are of vital importance. Like vitamin c, caffeine, morphine.
So, in a scientific sense, plants are important, yes? But would you believe me if I told you they changed history?
Wheat was the first plant to be cultivated. The seeds were used to make food and ultimately, lead to the establishment of early villages.
The mulberry tree has fruits. Silkworms only eat these fruits. Marco Polo was going to the east because of this. He would have never been there if it weren't for that tree!
Poppies contain opium, a painkiller. But it's also a drug. So, plants can be positive and negative.
Cotton was important in the slave trading.
And rubber! There would be no aeroplane without rubber. The wings of aeroplanes are made from rubber (produced from rubber tapping some trees). There is no synthetic material which can replace it.
And John F. Kennedy. 35th US president. In Ireland, they rely on potatoes. They heavily rely on potatoes. The potatoes were susceptible to a fungal pathogen. So, they couldn't be eaten. This resulted in the deaths of millions. But what does this have to do with John F Kennedy? Well, Kennedy's family was in Ireland and moved to USA, because of potato problems. The US president has to be born in the USA, so if it weren't for potatoes, John F Kennedy would have never been president.
Don't take me for a bad person when I say this, but it could have been really bad if that potato infection didn't happened. If Kennedy's family didn't move to America, obviously JFK would have never been president. This mean that somebody else would have become president, maybe Richard Nixon or another democrat. The cuban missile crisis happened in that presidency term. If someone else was elected, they could have botched it up completely, which would be really, really bad.
So, there you have it. Hopefully you appreciate plants on a whole new level now!
Comments
Post a Comment