Quotes About Plants

Much of ancient mythology is in fact a legal contract in which humans promise everlasting devotion to the gods in exchange for mastery over plants and animals

The Agricultural Revolution was history's biggest fraud. Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful or plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo Sapiens, rather than vice versa.

The transition to agriculture began around 9500–8500 BC in the hill country of south-eastern Turkey, western Iran, and the Levant. It began slowly and in a restricted geographical area. Wheat and goats were domesticated by approximately 9000 BC; peas and lentils around 8000 BC; olive trees by 5000 BC; horses by 4000 BC; and grapevines in 3500 BC. Some animals and plants, such as camels and cashew nuts, were domesticated even later, but by 3500 BC the main wave of domestication was over.

The average farmer worked harder than the average forager, and got a worse diet in return. The Agricultural Revolution was history's biggest fraud. Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesricated Homo sapiens, rather than vice versa.

All the world's plants capture only about 3,000 of those solar exajoules through the process of photosynthesis.3 All human activities and industries put together consume about 500 exajoules annually, equivalent to the amount of energy earth receives from the sun in just ninety minutes.

The Agricultural Revolution was history's biggest fraud. Who was responsible? Neither kings, nor priests, nor merchants. The culprits were a handful of plant species, including wheat, rice and potatoes. These plants domesticated Homo Sapiens, rather than vice versa.

When the rains finally came that drought year, Beka's Dad tried to persuade Lilla to concentrate on bougainvillea, crotons, and hibiscus. Plants like these grew easily and luxuriantly in the yard, but Lilla kept those trimmed back, and continued to struggle year after year in her attempt to cultivate roses like those she saw in magazines which arrived in the colony three months late from England.

That's not all our crops can do. We are also learning how to transform plants into factories. We can now raise plants that will create enzymes that would otherwise be created in chemical factories.

Sewage treatment plants use disinfectants to kill bacteria.

When I want to hear my echo," said Brother Cadfael, "I will at least speak first. Come on, now, and get the bottom strip of ground dug, there are kale plants waiting to go in.

I can grow cameras! she had shrieked at the Brill brothers during one briefing. Who's to say that despicable centaur Foaly hasn't succeded in splicing surveillance equiptment to plants? So get rid of all the flowers. Rocks, too. I don't trust them. Sullen little blebers.

Who loves a garden still his Eden keeps, Perennial pleasures plants, and wholesome harvest reaps.

Because living cells are programmable like computers, they could eventually be engineered to make just about anything. Potential uses include manufacturing plastics, creating plants that can detect chemical munitions by changing color, and even designing bioweapons that target individuals on the basis of their DNA.12 Here, too, Chinese military leaders have made innovation a top priority, calling biotech the new "strategic commanding heights" of national defense.

Botanists who study "twining handedness" have discovered that hops are unusual in their proclivity to twine in a clockwise direction; 90 percent of all climbing plants prefer to go counterclockwise.)

The soldiers had, apparently, been given beehives filled with the honey of bees that had feasted on rhododendron and azalea, plants that produce neurotoxins so potent that they remain active in the honey. Those who eat the honey succumb to honey intoxication, also called grayanotoxin poisoning.

Absinthe is legal today in Europe, the United States, and many places around the world. Some governments regulate the amount of thujone that may be present in the finished product—this in spite of the fact that many other culinary plants, including sage, are even higher in thujone and aren't regulated at all.

He understood perfectly the connection between booze and botany, which fascinates me as well.

We had arrived at the liquor store by then, and I was gesturing wildly at the shelves around us. "This is horticulture! In all of these bottles!

Although people can force a trap to close by running a finger along it, carnivorous plant enthusiasts consider this rude.

Young shoots contain enough cyanide to kill a horse. Death is mercifully swift, usually caused by cardiac arrest or respiratory failure and preceded by only a few hours of anxiety, convulsions, and staggering about.

Some growers believe that a particular type of music makes the plants grow faster, but most agree that the best strategy for the plants is to play whatever music the workers like best.

Drunken botanists? Given the role they play in creating the world's great drinks, it's a wonder there are any sober botanists at all.

The cultures of indigenous people of California," Anderson explained, "are rooted in a belief that nature has an inherent ability to renew itself, to cause the return of geese, the re-growth of the plants, the germination of next year's crop of wildflowers.

When you get into Louisiana, it really is like a different country in a lot of ways. The plants you see are a little different, like the weeping willows and the cypress trees that come up out of the bayou. And it's steamy hot.