Plants in Our Daily Life

A plant(also called green plants) is a multi-cellular living organism,member of kingdom Plantae.It is at the base of the food web and are Autotrophs.Plants are considered as backbone of all life on Earth and essential resource for living oragnisms.Plants can be reffered as a factory which processes light into energy and manufactures food for it ownself as well as for other living things.Scientists have foundmore than 270,000 spieces of plants They include a host of familiar organisms including trees, forbs, shrubs, grasses, vines, ferns, and mosses. Plants are unable to move on their own, mostly being rooted to the one place. Plants are essential for any ecosystem. “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto meant by this quote that plants are a healthy diet. Much of human nutrition depends on plants, either directly or indirectly.Human nutrition depends to a large extent on cereals, especially maize (or corn), wheat and rice. Other staple crops include potato, cassava, and legumes. Human food also includes vegetables, spices, and certain fruits, nuts, herbs, and edible flowers. Beverages produced from plants include coffee, tea, wine, beer and alcohol.Sugar is obtained mainly from sugar cane and sugar beet, and honey comes from flowers.Cooking oils and margarine come from maize, soybean, rapeseed, safflower, sunflower, olive and others. Food additives include gum arabic, guar gum, locust bean gum, starch and pectin.Livestock animals including cows, pigs, sheep, goats and camels are all herbivores; and most feed primarily or entirely on cereal plants, particularly grasses. Wood is used for buildings, furniture, paper, cardboard, musical instruments and sports equipment.

Cloth is often made from cotton, flax, rame or synthetic fibers derived from cellulose, such as rayon and acetate. Renewable fuels from plants include firewood, peat and many other biofuels. Coal and petroleum are fossil fuels derived from plants. Medicines derived from plants include aspirin, taxol, morphine, quinine, reserpine, colchicine, digitalis and vincristine. There are hundreds of herbal supplements such as ginkgo, Echinacea, feverfew, and Saint John’s wort. Pesticides derived from plants include nicotine, rotenone, strychnine and pyrethrins. Drugs obtained from plants include opium, cocaine and marijuana. Poisons from plants include ricin, hemlock and curare. Plants are the source of many natural products such as fibers, essential oils, natural dyes, pigments, waxes, tannins, latex, gums, resins, alkaloids, amber and cork. Products derived from plants include soaps, paints, shampoos, perfumes, cosmetics, turpentine, rubber, varnish, lubricants, linoleum, plastics, inks, chewing gum and hemp rope.

Plants are also a primary source of basic chemicals for the industrial synthesis of a vast array of organic chemicals. These chemicals are used in a vast variety of studies and experiments. 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. People use cut flowers, dried flowers and houseplants indoors or in greenhouses. In outdoor gardens, lawn grasses, shade trees, ornamental trees, shrubs, vines, herbaceous perennials and bedding plants are used. Images of plants are often used in art, architecture, humor, language, and photography and on textiles, money, stamps, flags and coats of arms. Living plant art forms include topiary, bonsai, ikebana and espalier. Ornamental plants have sometimes changed the course of history, as in tulipomania.

Plants are the basis of a multi-billion dollar per year tourism industry which includes travel to arboretums, botanical gardens, historic gardens, national parks, tulip festivals, rainforests, forests with colorful autumn leaves and the National Cherry Blossom Festival. Venus Flytrap, sensitive plant and resurrection plant are examples of plants sold as novelties. Tree rings are an important method of dating in archeology and serve as a record of past climates. Basic biological research has often been done with plants, such as the pea plants used to derive Gregor Mendel’s laws of genetics. Space stations or space colonies may one day rely on plants for life support. Plants are used as national and state emblems, including state trees and state flowers. Ancient trees are revered and many are famous. Numerous world records are held by plants. Plants are often used as memorials, gifts and to mark special occasions such as births, deaths, weddings and holidays. Plants figure prominently in mythology, religion and literature. The field of ethnobotany studies plant use by indigenous cultures which helps to conserve endangered species as well as discover new medicinal plants. Gardening is the most popular leisure activity in the U.S.

Working with plants or horticulture therapy is beneficial for rehabilitating people with disabilities. Certain plants contain psychotropic chemicals which are extracted and ingested, including tobacco, cannabis (marijuana), and opium. There is no denying the importance of plants and animals as living resources of enormous benefit, without which neither man nor other species could survive. God has not made any of His creatures worthless: every single form of life is the product of a special and intricate development by God, and each warrants special respect. As a living genetic resource, each species and variety is unique and irreplaceable. Once lost, it is lost forever.By virtue of their unique function of producing food from the energy of the sun, plants constitute the basic source of sustenance for animal and human life on earth. God has said:“Then let man consider his nourishment: that We pour down the rain in showers, and We split the earth in fragments, and therein make the grain to grow, and vines and herbs, and olives and palms, and gardens of dense foliage, and fruits and fodder – provision for you and your cattle.” (Quran 80:24-32)

In addition to their importance as nourishment, plants enrich the soil and protect it from erosion by wind and water. They conserve the water by detaining its runoff; they moderate the climate and produce the oxygen which we breathe. They are also of immense value as medicines, oils, perfumes, waxes, fibers, timber, and fuel. God has said in the Glorious Quran,“Have you seen the fire you kindle? Was it you who grew its timber or did We grow it? We have made it a reminder, and a comfort for the desert dwellers.” (Quran 56:71-73) A thing having many advantages and importance may have some or a few disadvantages;same is the case with plants or some types of plants.Weeds are uncultivated and usually unwanted plants growing in managed environments such as farms, urban areas, gardens, lawns, and parks. People have spread plants beyond their native ranges and some of these introduced plants become invasive, damaging existing ecosystems by displacing native species. Invasive plants cause costly damage in crop losses annually by displacing crop plants, they further increase the cost of production and the use of chemicals to control them, which in turn affects the environment.

Plants may cause harm to animals, including people. Plants that produce windblown pollen invoke allergic reactions in people who suffer from hay fever. A wide variety of plants are poisonous. Toxalbumins are plant poisons fatal to most mammals and act as a serious deterrent to consumption. Several plants cause skin irritations when touched, such as poison ivy. Certain plants contain psychotropic chemicals, which are extracted and ingested or smoked, including tobacco, cannabis (marijuana), cocaine and opium. Smoking causes damage to health or even death, while some drugs may also be harmful or fatal to people. Both illegal and legal drugs derived from plants may have negative effects on the economy, affecting worker productivity and law enforcement costs.Some plants cause allergic reactions when ingested, while other plants cause food intolerances that negatively affect health.

Nowadays, Many plants are been cut down for various purposes:manufactured goods such as paper,raw material such as wood ,decoration such as furniture and plants in houses etc. There is an increase in demand of goods made by plants but no one is concerned about their growth, which will benefit them.For there demand the nature has to face many problems.The public is unaware of its after effects.They never imagined a life witout plants.If there would be no plants,there would be no more oxygen to breathe in because there are only two ways to get oxygen:air and plants,global warming will increase,lands wil be like deserts and there would no beauty of nature left behind.The living life would completely vanish without plants one day,if this behavior ofpeople would continue.To save our selves from that life ,we should grow more and more plants and save plants.We can save plants by using limited and less number of manufactured goods from plants,stop cutting them down for human activites such as building houses ask others to not to harm the plants. As a common person,I would like to say that we should take care of plants because plants benefits us in our dailyl life.Everyone should grow atleast one plant and take care of it and save the trees around us.