We love animals.
We’re people persons.
We love adventure and new places.
Add plants to the mix and we can appreciate plant connections to our world.
Planet Earth is a Plant Earth
Glance at the Earth
from outer space and you’ll see the blue of the ocean and the green of plants.
Browns and yellow show plant sparsity depending on their world location.
Plants really are the visibly dominant life form here on Earth. You won’t see tigers or pink flamingos from this view.
Meet Animals
Cats may rule the Internet, but plants support them and all other animals.
Cats and dogs eat animals that eat plants.
There’s that food chain with plants as the base.
And wild animals make plants their habitat.
Meet People
So many plant businesses, plant scientists, plant professionals, plant lovers and plant connected people lead the way to promote plants. Their hard work and plant shout outs make plants an answer for Earth sustainability.
Global Plant Places
Places on Earth are defined by their plants. Climate is the pattern of temperature and precipitation over time. Plants adapt to their climate regions, and the animals that survive there rely on the plants.
The global diversity of plants is amazing - swaying palm trees, magnificent Redwoods, prickly cacti, uplifting prairies…
Meet the Animals
Sloths
Slow and sleepy sloths live in trees in Central and South American rainforests.
Their adaptation and plant connection is their green fur, camouflaging them from predators in the green, green forest.
Sloths are champions in plant connection – diet, habitat, waste recycler all in a one able bodied ecosystem.
The green color is from algae - Trichophilus welckeri. Disclaimer - Trichophilus welckeri algae is actually from the Protista Kingdom, not the Plant Kingdom, but it photosynthesizes with the green pigment chlorophyll as plants do.
Sloth Poop. Sloths eat the algae from their fur. Sloth fur also contains insects. When sloths go to the forest floor to poop once a week, female sloth moths jump off of the sloth’s fur and into the sloth poop where it lays its eggs
Horses
Hay is for horses.
How does such a big, muscular powerful animal get enough calories from its vegan diet?
It’s their insanely efficient digestive system that breaks down the hay polysaccharides, the carbohydrates that make up the cell walls of the grass and hay they eat. Polysaccharides get demolished into monosaccharides, that smaller carb, that feed the horse.
Elephants
These soulful herbivores
eat a massive amount of plants. Elephants will eat all plant organs – stems, roots, seeds, flowers, fruits and leaves.
Adult elephants can eat about 200 – 600 pounds of plants a day
Conflicts between elephants and humans happen when they invade human’s farms and gardens in search of plants to eat. Increasing human populations means more land is used and fewer plants are available. Survival sustainability puts elephant and humans at odds. Solutions are needed to respect the land needs of hungry elephants and hungry people.
Meet the People
Plants in Culture and Countries
ROLAND JEFFERSON
Botanist and Plant Explorer
Roland Jefferson propagated and promoted the cherry trees you see in Washington, DC – these are the famous blooms visited every year.
.
Photo from the National Agricultural Library, Special Collections, Archival Materials, United States Department of Agriculture.
Plant Places
International Flags
Do you have a travel bucket list? Here’s another way to make that list – visit these countries that have plants on their flags:
Canada's flag is graced with the Maple tree leaf.
Mexico's flag features prickly pear cactus and oak and laurel trees.
Belize's flag displays the Mahogany tree.
Haiti's flag grows a palm tree.
Jose Maria Velasco, Mexican painter, said
"Nature can be a symbol of national identity".
Award-winning Global Teachers Celebrate Plants
Travel to plants in the world with the renowned Global Teacher Prize Ambassadors. Here are meaningful plants from their countries:
Marcio Andrade. The sustainable Brazilian Baru tree is used for reforestation, and its nuts provide protein and antioxidants.
Alex Harper.
Golden wattle, Australia’s national emblem and grass trees.
Souad Belcaide.
Morocco’s drought resistant Argan tree produces oil which is processed by women’s cooperatives and used for food and beauty.
Elisa Guerra Cruz.
Mexican Biznaga, one of the succulent cacti Ferocactus is used to make sweets.
It’s commonly known as the succulent Barrel Cactus.
Botanical Gardens
Botanical Gardens are like plant zoos. Unlike animals, the plants don’t move around so you can always see them.
I crave Botanical Gardens. They’re one of my favorite plant places. You can find them worldwide, featuring plants you may have never seen before. Many have indoor greenhouses (conservatories) as well as the outdoor green spaces.
Kew Gardens, London.
“…centre of botanical science & research”.
Magical, royal and ethereal. I visited them during the 2012 London Summer Olympics.
Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens,
Los Angeles, California.
“…spectacular gardens spread across 120 acres”.
This is a learning lab and Plants Go Global inspiration for me as a Huntington Reader/researcher.
New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York.
Fondly known as the Bronx Botanic Garden, it is "an iconic living museum with incredible greenhouses".
After visiting the Bronx Botanic Garden catch some baseball to see the classy green turf at Yankee Stadium where carbon sequestering Kentucky Bluegrass is grown.
The United States Botanic Garden, Washington, DC is on the Mall, right next to the Capital.
The USBG aims to
"inspire the public to become more active stewards of the plants that support life on earth.”
The Botanic Gardens Conservation International
"Plants for the Planet"
With plant diversity plunging and plant extinctions at risk this organization champions plant conservation.
Farms and Agrotourism
Look for farms that are open for tours or have special events.
Corn fields have been morphed into mazes.
WIRED Magazine calls Mike’s Maze of Sunderland, Massachusetts "The most elaborate corn maze in America".
Mike and his cronies use software that lays out the maze paths. Each year’s maze is themed, covering science, history, art and culture. People learn despite themselves while getting lost.
Do like a farmer and harvest the crops – apples, pumpkins and berries are super fun. It’s a great way to have children and students see how their food is grown, and they can become enticed to eat them.
Meet the Plants
Ginko: A Living Plant Fossil
Gingko trees are part of the fossil record dating back 200 million years, that survive today.
Ginkgo’s other common name is Maidenhair.
Its leaves are inspiration for art, jewelry and other beautiful objects.
Look at a Gingko leaf and you’ll see a fan-like shaped leaves with a smooth texture is smooth and ribbed veins throughout. The leaves attach to branch’s grey, smooth protuberances in groups of 3. Unlike other deciduous trees that lose their leaves gradually in autumn, Gingkoes lose their leaves quickly in large piles.
How Gingkos got Old, Putrid, and Fascinating
Yale University’s Dr. Peter Crane tells all in Yale Environment 360 (published by Yale University and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies).
Carnivorous Plants: Everyone's favorites
Who can resist a plant that eats animals alive?
It totally makes plants seem like animals.
They'e not, of course. But this is how many people first connect with plants.
Charles Darwin, rock star evolutionist couldn’t resist carnivorous plants.
He was so intrigued he wrote an entire book called “Insectivorous Plants”.
He especially adored the Venus Fly Trap -
“…from the rapidity and force of its movements, it is one of the most wonderful (plant) in the world”
Pictured here is the Sun Dew, one of the Drosera genus. The "Dew" is actually sticky stuff that traps tasty insects used by the plant for nutrients.
In Insectivorous Plants, Darwin meticulously documented many experiments to see what the carnivorous plants would go for – human hair, cotton thread, needles, sugar solution, hot water, wet meat, gelatin, oil of cloves, saliva, turpentine and cobra poison. What curiosity and imagination - now that’s doing science!