Plants and People

1. Plants and People

2. People Use Plants as Sources of: • Food* • Beverages* • Medicines/Drugs* • Poisons* • Flavorings • Fragrances • Building Materials • Dyes • Aesthetic Enjoyment*

4. Neanderthal Homo sapiens (archaic) Homo sapiens (modern) 200,000 100,000 present Agriculture

5. Poaceae The Grass Family oats rice wheat The most economically important family of flowering plants ... sugar cane bamboo

6. oats rice wheat The most economically important family of flowering plants ... 50% of humanities' calories come from the grass family! sugar cane bamboo

7. Wheat (Triticum aestivum) was first domesticated in Mesopotamia

8. Triticum spp. Einkorn Durum Emmer Bread Triticum monococcum T. turgidum T. aestivum

10. Global Wheat Production, 2005

12. Coffee (Coffea arabica) Rubiaceae - the Coffee Family

13. Caffeine, an alkaloid, is a CNS stimulant: it increases the heart rate and blood pressure, stimulates respiration, and constricts blood vessels. It is also an appetite suppressant and a mild diuretic.

14. So what is it doing in the plant?

16. According to Michael Pollan (Botany of Desire), caffeine “unhinges an insect’s nervous system and kills its appetite.”

20. Coffee grows best in cool highlands; it is intolerant of frost.

21. Coffee leaves are shiny, simple, and opposite. Flowers are small, white, and fragrant, in axillary clusters.

22. Coffee History According to legend, coffee drinking began almost 12 centuries ago, when an Abyssinian goat herd named Khalid noticed the antics of his frisky herd of goats …

23. Clement VIII Coffee afficionados claim that the spread of its popularity is due to Pope Clement VIII's influence. Being pressured by his advisers to declare coffee the "bitter invention of Satan" because of its popularity among Muslims, he instead declared that, "This devil's drink is so good... we should cheat the devil by baptizing it." Pope from January 30, 1592 to March 3, 1605

24. Mad dog in an English coffeehouse

26. Roasting Roasting is done in cylinders that simultaneously heat and tumble the seeds.

27. Coffee beans are roasted at temperatures of about 400-450 degrees F. for about 10-15 minutes.

28. Coffee is the world’s second-most heavily traded commodity. Unfortunately, the grower sees little of the profit.

30. Plants in Modern Medicine

31. Garden Foxglove: Digitalis purpurea (Snapdragon Family)

32. William Withering 1741-1799 An Account of the Foxglove and Some of Its Medical Uses: With Practical Remarks on Dropsy and Other Diseases, 1785

33. Digitalis Bolster'd with down, amid a thousand wants, Pale Dropsy rears his bloated form, and pants; "Quench me ye cool pellucid rills," he cries, Wets his parched tongue and rolls his hollow eyes. … Divine Hygeia from the bending sky Descending, listens to his piercing cry; Assumes bright Digitalis dress and air; Her ruby cheek, white neck and raven hair; O'er him she waves the serpent-wreathed wand, Cheers with her voice and raises with her hand Warms with rekindling bloom his visage wan, And charms the shapeless monster into man. Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin

34. 1928 - The glycosides digitoxin and digitalis were isolated. These have been determined to have a strong effect on the heart muscle.

35. Congestive Heart Failure

36. Digitalis purpurea Foxglove

37. Strychnos toxifera Loganiaceae D-tubocurarine

38. Curare is used as a poison with which to tip darts shot through a blowgun

39. Recently, D-tubocurarine has been used to relax the heart muscles during open heart surgery. D-tubocurarine DRUG One man’s meat is another man’s poison.

40. Plants in Art and Literature Madonna of the Rose Bushes ca. 1440 Lochner, Stefan Georgia O’Keefe

41. The force that through the green fuse drives the flowerDrives my green age … • Dylan Thomas, • (1934)