Extract
Why do botanists do what they do? A perfectly acceptable response – in my view – is that they are fascinated by plants and want to discover how they ‘work’. Others – particularly those who may fund such work via their taxes – might prefer a more applied answer, maybe along the lines of ‘plants are extremely useful resources and to exploit them fully we need to study them’. Well, for those practitioners who might need a reminder of just how useful plants are, and why people need them, and for those who want to be assured that their taxes are being put to good use, Wood and Habgood's Why people need plants (hereafter referred to as Plants!) might be just the thing.
Plants! justifies its existence by dealing with the more obvious uses of plants in separate chapters: as providers of food (where do you think ‘our daily bread’ comes from?), drinks (tea, coffee, ultimately alcoholic beverages, too …), medicines (e.g. aspirin, morphine, anti-cancer drugs, quinine …), sources of protection (e.g. timber as a construction material and fibres to clothe us …). To a great extent those are well-established, often ancient, uses of plants and absolutely have to be covered in such a tome. But, to emphasise our continued and future exploitation of (maybe even dependence upon?) plants and plant products, Plants! also covers uses that may be less obvious to the general public (and maybe even some botanists?). Accordingly, it has chapters devoted to biofuels (featuring short-rotation coppice, elephant grass and switch grass, biogas, biodiesel and bioethanol); plants in crime – both as ‘weapons’ (e.g. plant-derived poisons) and as sources of evidence (e.g. flowers at a crime scene and their pollen on the suspect's clothes); and plants for nutrition and well-being (although the nutritional value of plants should be well known – yes, vitamin C-containing fruits combating scurvy get a prominent mention – plant flavours, aromas and colours all also have a role to play, and these may be more subtle). One of the most contentious areas of modern plant science – genetic modification – is tackled in a dedicated chapter that provides appropriate genetic background and outlines the techniques and their current applications in a reasonably straightforward way. This chapter is careful not to say whether GM is ‘good’ or ‘bad’: the reader must make up his or her own mind on that score.
