There seems now to be an entire disconnect in people’s minds between plants and our utter dependence on them. It is perhaps understandable that the general public may not understand the concept of primary production, the plant manufacture of sugars and other organic compounds via photosynthesis, which lies at the basis of life on Earth. But it’s less so that most of us just don’t get the fact that all human existence – even now, with our smartphones and our daily chat about what is cool and what is not – is ultimately dependent on a suite of about 30 crop plants, and that without them we are dead. This misapprehension, this simple ignorance, matters very much in a world where wild plants are increasingly endangered – including, let it be said, many wild relatives of those 30 or so crops, which may be needed to boost resistance to climate change and plant disease in a 21st century where feeding the soaring world population sustainably will be a terrifying challenge. A fifth of the world’s 391,000 wild plant species are now thought to be threatened with extinction; more than 10% of the world’s vegetable land cover has changed just in the past decade; and our disregard of the plant kingdom continues apace. This disregard needs to be countered. Plants need friends.
Source: Michael McCarthy in the Guardian, 10 May 2016
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/10/plants-wild-plant-…
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