Plants
Making life possible since 430,000,000 B.C.
Over 80% of the commodities we use every day — including petroleum — are made of organic compounds and materials produced by plants. Plants are the first and most efficient “factories” ever designed. Consider this:
Plants are the only factories that make food, medicines, and millions of other useful products from dirt, air, sunlight, and water;
Plant factories are self-sustaining — they generate their own energy from light and raw elements;
Plant factories are maintenance-free — in their own habitats they need no extra care;
Plant factories continually enrich their (and our) soil, water, and air environments.
Plant factories are environmentally safe — they produce no toxic waste (and require no paved parking;)
Plant factories are self-regenerating — before it dies, a plant may produce thousands of offspring to ensure the continued existence of that unique species;
Most important, plants are the only factories that make protoplasm — the substance of all living cells — from raw elements, the vital link that sustains all life on Earth, including our own.
Plants are the largest and last resource frontier on Earth, and the potential they have to improve our lives is largely ignored. The parent stock of the lush fruits and juicy vegetables we stuff into our grocery sacks once looked as unpromising as the tangle of underbrush we see in any unkempt lot. The work of domesticating the plants that insulate us from starvation began during the Stone Age, and it is ironic that with the development of the 30 Old and New World crop species that we rely on today, our ancestors settled into agricultural complacency.
It is time to get back to work! Less than 1% of the world's plants have been thoroughly investigated for their potential to benefit mankind. In the field of food alone, we need a revival of horticultural work on the scale that created corn, wheat, tomatoes, and potatoes. Plants are also the only renewable and sustainable source of oils for fuel and for industry and manufacturing. Finite petroleum resources (also from ancient plants) are dwindling — plant oils can be part of the solution. And plants provide many of our live-saving medicines. This nearby realm of plant treasures offers no less promise than do our fantasies of intergalactic expansion.
It is easy to take plants for granted and ignore the fact that our lives are only possible because they supply us with oxygen, foods, medicines, and myriad goods. But the time has come we can no longer afford to ignore them. Our future rests squarely on our willingness to assume an enlightened stewardship over the Earth’s embattled plant life. A revival of economic botany and research on the plants around us has begun. It is not just a wave of the future — it is a tidal wave, and Useful Wild Plants, Inc., stands ready to advance this expansion of human understanding.
Five decades of research have gone into the Useful Wild Plants Project and the monumental and comprehensive Useful Wild Plants of Texas, the Southeastern and Southwestern United States, the Southern Plains, and Northern Mexico. This multi-volume work is the first of its kind and is the prototype for studies of other parts of the world.
We are looking for strong hands and even stronger hearts to join us in sowing the seeds for a renaissance of horticultural, medical, pharmaceutical, and commodities research, sustainable agriculture, conservation, and, ultimately, the development of a new branch of knowledge and education.
Join us. It’s a big job. Somebody’s got to do it.