Seeds of Change: The Uses of Plants

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It is not possible to conceive of civilization, or life on earth for that matter, without plants. Through photosynthesis and oxygen production, plants are the major producers of biomass and constitute the base of the food pyramid. Plants also have evolved astounding diversity of forms, sizes, shapes, colors, smells and chemical compounds. This structural, nutritional and chemical flexibility has been put to innumerable uses by people, from hunter gatherers to the scientists in search of a cure for AIDS. Plants are at the core of our everyday necessities (food, clothing, shelter, medicines, beverages), simple pleasures (flower, fragrances) and pervasive problems (energy supply, drug addition, famine). Plants have changed civilization in dramatic ways in the past. Witness, for example, the spectacular alterations in diet and the increased population growth catalyzed by the Columbian Exchange. In the future we expect that plants will continue to affect people through an increasingly complex interplay between new technologies such as genetic engineering, the pressure on natural resources, and the search for new crops, medicines and biomaterials.