From the author of The History of the World in 100 Animals, a BBC
Radio Four Book of the Week, comes an inspirational new book that
looks at the 100 plants that have had the greatest impact on
humanity, stunningly illustrated throughout. As humans, we hold the
planet in the palms of ours hands. But we still consume the energy
of the sun in the form of food. The sun is available for
consumption because of plants. Plants make food from the sun by the
process of photosynthesis; nothing else in the world can do this.
We eat plants, or we do so at second hand, by eating the eaters of
plants. Plants give us food. Plants take in carbon dioxide and push
out oxygen: they give us the air we breathe, direct the rain that
falls and moderate the climate. Plants also give us shelter,
beauty, comfort, meaning, buildings, boats, containers, musical
instruments, medicines and religious symbols. We use flowers for
love, we use flowers for death. The fossils of plants power our
industries and our transport. Across history we have used plants to
store knowledge, to kill, to fuel wars, to change our state of
consciousness, to indicate our status. The first gun was a plant,
we got fire from plants, we have enslaved people for the sake of
plants. We humans like to see ourselves as a species that has risen
above the animal kingdom, doing what we will with the world. But we
couldn't live for a day without plants. Our past is all about
plants, our present is all tied up with plants; and without plants
there is no future. From the mighty oak to algae, from cotton to
coca here are a hundred reasons why.
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