THE IMPORTANCE OF PLANTS 



By William J. Bobbins 



Professor of Botany, Columbia University, and Director of the New York 

 Botanical Garden 



Nothing I have to say here is new ; all of it has been known for many 

 years, some of it for a century or more. Yet I believe that the repeti- 

 tion from time to time of facts of fundamental import has its place. 

 Even scientists can on occasion review with profit the broad signifi- 

 cance of the material on which they spend their lives. One group of 

 facts of the character I mention concerns the place occupied by plants 

 in the life of man and the economy of nature. 



PLANTS THE BASIS OF LIFE 



Plants are the basis upon which all other life depends. In the last 

 analysis they supply us with all the food we eat, they maintain the 

 oxygen content of the air and they are the primary source of those 

 important accessory foods, the vitamins. Without plants we would 

 starve to death, die of suffocation, and expire from a combination of 

 deficiency diseases. In addition, plants are the chief means by which 

 the energy of the sun is and has been in ages past caught and stored 

 for us in usable form. Without plants fire would be unknown because 

 there would be no wood or coal or petroleum to burn, and electricity— 

 except as a natural phenomenon — would be at most limited to areas 

 freely supplied with water power. 



The essential relation of plants to the food we eat, the air we breathe, 

 and the energy we dissipate with such reckless abandon is based on 

 two of their characteristics. These are their ability to store the energy 

 of the sun's rays in sugar, starch, cellulose, oils, fats, and other con- 

 stituents of the plant body, and their ability to construct from simple 

 and elementary substances types of chemical compounds necessary for 

 the existence of animals, including ourselves. 



1 Address of the vice president and chairman for 1943 of the Section on the Botanical 

 Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, Cleveland, September 1944. 

 Reprinted by permission from Science, vol. 100, No. 2603, Nov. 17, 1944. 



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