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MORE PLANTS FOR MAN 



W. H. Hodge 



Someone has said that our modern civilization, at the threshold of the atomic 

 age, is still content to sow and harvest the crop plants of the Stone Age. It 

 does seem remarkable that of the thousands of species of higher plants known 

 to science today, relatively speaking only a handful, mostly of ancient 

 lineage, are the ones still widely cultivated as our major crops. That these 

 particular plants have served mankind well is indicated by their ability to 

 support a rapidly increasing population down through the centuries. Yet the 

 origins of these plants are lost for the most part in prehistoric time. Com- 

 pared to them a neophyte like the Para rubber tree {Hevea brasiliensis) , a 

 mere century old in culture, is but a babe in agriculture's arms. 



Since earliest time man has focused his attention on the possible utility 

 of the members of the green world around him. The very antiquity of our 

 major crops is ample proof of aboriginal preoccupation with plants. The first 

 manuscripts and books on botany were also devoted principally to utilitarian 

 species. Man's interest in bringing together information on useful plants has 

 continued to the present, and in our libraries may be found accounts of such 

 plants of regions as widely scattered as Guam and Trinidad, Venezuela and 

 Zanzibar. In this field is a wealth of information largely uncorrected, based 

 on practically every area of the world. 



We have long known that plants exist which produce fibers, proteins, latex 

 and waxes, vitamins, alkaloids and glucosides, pigments, tannins, and oils. 

 Who is to say, though, that we are utilizing the best species available for 

 each purpose? Medicinal aloe is still collected primarily from the two species 

 known to the ancients, who discovered this drug. Is this to admit that among 

 the scores of Aloe species described in recent times a better drug source may 

 not exist? Man simply has not investigated this possibility. And so it goes 

 with many of our economic species. The aloe-like century plants {Agave) 

 of the New World constitute another good example; sisal and henequen, im- 



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