Human uses of plants include both practical uses, such as for food, clothing, and medicine, and symbolic uses, such as in art, mythology and literature. Materials derived from are collectively called plant products.
Edible plants have long been a source of nutrition for , and the reliable provision of food through agriculture and horticulture is the basis of civilization since the Neolithic Revolution. were and still remain to be the key ingredients of many traditional medicine practices, as well as being for some modern . The study of plant uses by native peoples is ethnobotany, while economic botany focuses on modern cultivated plants. Plants are also used as feedstock for many industrial products including timber, paper and , as well as a wide range of chemicals.
give millions of people pleasure through gardening, and floriculture is a popular pastime among many. Viticulture and winemaking can provide both culinary and economic values to society. In art, mythology, religion, literature and film, plants play important roles, symbolising themes such as fertility, growth, purity, and rebirth. In architecture and the decorative arts, plants provide many themes, such as Islamic art and the acanthus forms carved on to classical Corinthian order column capitals.
Context
Culture consists of the
social behaviour and norms found in
human society and transmitted through social
learning. Cultural universals in all human societies include expressive forms like
art,
music,
dance,
ritual,
religion, and
technology like
tool,
cooking, shelter, and
clothing. The concept of
material culture covers physical expressions such as technology, architecture and art, whereas immaterial culture includes principles of social organization,
mythology,
philosophy,
literature, and
science.
This article describes the many roles played by plants in human culture.
Practical uses
As food
Humans depend on plants for
food, either directly or as feed for
.
Agriculture deals with the production of food crops, and has played a key role in the history of world civilizations. Agriculture includes
agronomy for
arable crops,
horticulture for vegetables and fruit, and
forestry for timber.
About 7,000 species of plant have been used for food, though most of today's food is derived from only 30 species. The major
staple crop include
such as
rice and
wheat, starchy roots and tubers such as
cassava and
potato, and
such as
peas and
.
such as
olive oil provide
lipids, while
fruit and
contribute
and minerals to the diet.
In industry
Plants grown as
are the source of a wide range of products used in manufacturing, sometimes so intensively as to risk harm to the environment.
Nonfood products include
,
, pigments, waxes,
,
, alkaloids, amber and
Cork material. Products derived from plants include soaps, shampoos, perfumes, cosmetics, paint, varnish, turpentine, rubber,
latex, lubricants, linoleum, plastics, inks, and gums. Renewable fuels from plants include
firewood,
peat and other
.
The
coal,
petroleum and
natural gas are derived from the remains of aquatic organisms including
phytoplankton in
geological time.
Structural materials and fibres from plants are used to construct dwellings and to manufacture clothing. Wood is used not only for buildings, boats, and furniture, but also for smaller items such as musical instruments, hand tools, and sports equipment. Wood is pulped to make paper and cardboard.
Plants are a primary source of basic chemicals, both for their medicinal and physiological effects, and for the industrial synthesis of a vast array of organic chemicals.[ Note that the details of each plant and the chemicals it yields are described in the linked subpages.]
In medicine
Many hundreds of medicines are derived from plants, both traditional medicines used in
herbalism and chemical substances purified from plants or first identified in them, sometimes by
ethnobotany search, and then synthesised for use in modern medicine. Modern medicines derived from plants include
aspirin,
taxol,
morphine,
quinine,
reserpine,
colchicine,
digitalis and
vincristine. Plants used in herbalism include
Ginkgo biloba,
echinacea,
feverfew, and Saint John's wort. The
pharmacopoeia of
Dioscorides,
De Materia Medica, describing some 600 medicinal plants, was written between 50 and 70 AD and remained in use in Europe and the Middle East until around 1600 AD; it was the precursor of all modern pharmacopoeias.
For chemicals
derived from plants include
nicotine,
rotenone,
strychnine and
.
Plants such as
tobacco,
cannabis,
opium poppy, and
coca yield
psychotropic chemicals.
from plants include
atropine,
ricin,
Conium and
curare, though many of these also have medicinal uses.
In gardening
Thousands of plant species are cultivated for aesthetic purposes as well as to provide shade, modify temperatures, reduce wind, abate noise, provide privacy, and prevent
soil erosion. Plants are the basis of a multibillion-dollar per year tourism industry, which includes travel to
garden tourism,
,
,
with colorful autumn leaves, and festivals such as
Hanami and America's cherry blossom festivals.
There are also art forms specializing in the arrangement of cut or living plants, such as bonsai, ikebana, and the arrangement of cut or dried flowers. have sometimes changed the course of history, as in tulip mania.
In science
Basic biological research has often been done with plants. In
genetics, the breeding of pea plants allowed
Gregor Mendel to derive the basic laws governing inheritance,
and examination of
in maize allowed Barbara McClintock to demonstrate their connection to inherited traits.
The plant
Arabidopsis thaliana is used in laboratories as a
model organism to understand how
control the growth and development of plant structures.
predicts that space stations or space colonies will one day rely on plants for life support.
Scientific advances in genetic engineering led to developments in crops. Genetically modified crops introduce new traits to plants which they do not have naturally. These can bring benefits such as a decrease in the use of harmful pesticides, by building in qualities such as insect resistance and herbicide tolerance.
Living structures
The ability of trees to graft is occasionally exploited by
tree shaping to create living root bridges in
Meghalaya and
Nagaland states in India and on the islands of
Sumatra and
Java in Indonesia. The
of rubber fig trees,
Ficus elastica, are used to form suspension bridges across mountain streams.
Symbolic uses
In art
Plants appear in art, either to illustrate their botanical appearance,
or for the purposes of the artist, which may include decoration or
Plant symbolism, often religious. For example, the
Virgin Mary was compared by the
Venerable Bede to a
lily, the white
denoting purity of body, while the yellow
signified the radiant light of the soul; accordingly, European portraits of the Virgin's
Annunciation may depict a vase of white lilies in her room to indicate her attributes. Plants are also often used as backgrounds or features in portraits, and as main subjects in
.
Architectural designs resembling plants appear in the capitals of columns, which were carved to resemble either the Nymphaea lotus or the Cyperus papyrus.
In literature and film
Both real and fictitious plants play a wide variety of roles in literature and film.
Plants' roles may be evil, as with the
triffids, carnivorous plants with a whip-like poisonous sting as well as mobility provided by three foot-like appendages, from
John Wyndham's 1951
science fiction novel
The Day of the Triffids, and subsequent films and radio plays.
J. R. R. Tolkien's
Middle-earth makes use of many named kinds of plant, including the healing herb
athelas[ The Fellowship of the Ring, I 12 "Flight to the Ford".] the yellow star-flower
elanor which grows in special places such as Cerin Amroth in Lothlórien,
[ The Fellowship of the Ring, II 6 "Lothlórien".] and the tall
mallorn tree
[ The Return of the King, VI 9 "The Grey Havens".] of the elves. Tolkien names several individual trees of significance in the narrative, including the Party Tree in the
Shire with its happy associations,
and the malevolent Old Man Willow
[ The Fellowship of the Ring, I 6 "The Old Forest".] in the
Old Forest.
Trees feature in many of Ursula K. Le Guin's books, including the forest world of Athshe and the
Immanent Grove on Roke in the Earthsea series, to such an extent that in her introduction to her collection
The Wind's Twelve Quarters, she admits to "a certain obsession with trees" and describes herself as "the most
arboreal science fiction writer".
's 2009 film
Avatar features a giant tree named Hometree, the sacred gathering place of the
humanoid Na'vi tribe; the interconnected tree, tribe and planet are threatened by mining: the tribe and the film's hero fight to save them.
Trees are common subjects in
poetry, including
Joyce Kilmer's 1913 lyric poem named "Trees".
Flowers, similarly, are the subjects of many poems by poets such as
William Blake,
Robert Frost, and Rabindranath Tagore.
In mythology and religion
Plants figure prominently in mythology and
religion, where they symbolise themes such as
fertility, growth,
immortality and rebirth, and may be more or less magical.
Thus in Latvian mythology,
Austras koks is a tree which grows from the start of the Sun's daily journey across the sky.
A different cosmic tree is
Yggdrasil, the
World tree of
Norse mythology, on which
Odin hung.
Different again is the barnacle tree, believed in the
Middle Ages to have barnacles that opened to reveal
Barnacle goose,
a story which may perhaps have started from an observation of
growing on
driftwood.
mentions many plants and flowers,
where for example the
lotus tree bears a fruit that causes a pleasant drowsiness,
while moly is a magic herb mentioned by
Homer in the
Odyssey with a black root and white blossoms.
[ cites: Homer, Odyssey, x. 302–306.]
The mandrake is and its roots can resemble a human figure, so it has long been used in magic, and is still used in contemporary paganism such as Wicca and Odinism.
See also
