Misha's Blog

People have cultivated plants and have enjoyed plant spectatorship for centuries. From the hanging gardens of Egypt to the potted plants of today: they all required peopleʼs care and management. People continue to get to know plants better: we want to know how plants work and live. Ethnobotany opens the door for us to wrap our minds around the unparalleled influence plants have had on us humans: everything from food, to building material, to medicine is derived from plants.

New evidence shows that plants have evolved a vast array of systems to coexist with mobile creatures: by looking at their adaptations ranging from secretion of poisons to subtle chemical plant-to-plant communication we catch a glimpse of their awareness. Historically, our consciousness has been heavily influenced by plant cultivation and pharmacology.

At this point in our human development however, our impact on plants is so incredibly great that our pollution is a power that rivals the forces of nature. Humans, it turns out, were never really apart from nature but are instead incredibly linked with it through all our activities. What can our culture do for plants in return for all they’ve helped us do? Can we turn cultural waste into fertilizer?