Botany is the scientific study of plants, and it’s full of drama, intrigue, history, and oodles of small yet essential things that happen every single day. In fact, “it’s no overstatement to say our lives—and the lives of every other creature on Earth—depend on plants.”
“We humans think we’re such a big deal, but if you squished up every living thing on the planet into one big ball, eighty percent of it would be plants, and less than one percent would be mammals.
“Some folks say we’re missing the forest for the trees, but we’re also missing the trees! And the ferns, and the mosses, and the palms and the sedges.”
“There’s a whole other world here, and it’s all around us. You see, plants aren’t just a bunch of wallflowers. You just weren’t a part of their group chat yet. But that’s all about to change, and they have so much dirt to dish out.”
How does botany shape our world? How are we surrounded by plants all day long, even when we’re inside with not one house plant in sight? Why is it so important to understand the power of plants on our planet?
Shelter, clothes, medicines, food, the oxygen we breathe, and the civilizations we’ve built are all possible because of plants. American forager and cook Alexis Nikole Nelson describes all this and more in this inaugural episode of Crash Course Botany on YouTube and TheCrashCourse.com.
Watch these related plant and Crash Course videos next:
• Why is biodiversity so important?
• Why are coastal wetlands so important?
• The Impact of One Cotton T-Shirt
• Home Sweet Habitat & Food Webs – Crash Course Kids
• What is an Animal? Rae Wynn-Grant explains with Crash Course Zoology
Bonus: The Journey of Vanilla – From Plant to Extract.
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