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Why Plants?
Why Plants?
However small of a role plants may seem to play in our lives, without them, life on Earth would cease to exist. They produce oxygen through photosynthesis, which is necessary for us to breathe, and they form the groundwork for our food supply, providing fruits, vegetables, grains, and oils. Plants also play a critical role in medicine, providing compounds for treatments like aspirin and cancer drugs. Beyond food and medicine, plants give us materials like cotton for clothing and wood for houses. From providing food and medicine to being used as shelter in certain areas, plants have no shortage of purpose for us. For thousands of years, plants have supported humans economically, nutritionally, medicinally, and have served as an integral part of many cultures. However in the recent years, an issue called "plant awareness disparity" has arisen, which is the idea that more often than not people have "the tendency not to notice plants within [their] environment, leading to naïve and anthropocentric points of view, such as plants are not important to humans, are boring, or do not do anything" (Wandersee and Schussler, 1999; Parsley, 2020). This is a problem because if humans are unable to see the importance of plants, we will continue to treat them as something replaceable, which endangers our ecosystems, habitats and food supplies. In order to combat this issue, it is important to educate younger generations and help them understand the science of plants, not only for the future of humanity, but for the future of all life on Earth itself. By recognizing the vital role plants play in our lives, we can take better care of them and, in turn, protect our planet.
Plant Classifications
In order to easily identify the structure or type of plants, there are four different classifications that plants can fall under.
Bryophytes:
Bryophytes are non-vascular plants, which means they have no roots or vascular tissue, but instead absorb water and nutrients from the air through their surface (e.g., their leaves). These are plants such as mosses.
Ferns:
Ferns are a group of vascular plants. Instead of flowers or seeds, they reproduce sexually through small pores and occasionally reproduce vegetatively. They are normally perennial and grow back yearly.
Gymnosperms:
A gymnosperm is a type of plant that belongs to a group of seed-producing plants known for having "naked seeds," meaning their seeds are not enclosed within a fruit or ovary. Instead, the seeds are often exposed on cones or similar structures.
Angiosperms:
An angiosperm is a type of plant that belongs to the largest group of seed-producing plants, known for having seeds enclosed within a fruit. Angiosperms are also called flowering plants, as they reproduce through flowers.
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