{"id":826,"date":"2010-04-21T10:31:31","date_gmt":"2010-04-20T22:31:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2010\/04\/iwas_going_to_write_about\/"},"modified":"2010-04-21T10:31:31","modified_gmt":"2010-04-20T22:31:31","slug":"iwas-going-to-write-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.waikato.ac.nz\/bioblog\/2010\/04\/iwas-going-to-write-about\/","title":{"rendered":"why don’t students study plants?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was<\/i> going to write about yesterday’s dreadful Herald<\/i> headline on the risks of multivitamin pills (which implied that women taking multi-vits are at a hugely increased risk of breast cancer) – but Jim McVeagh beat me to it<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

I’ve just finished giving my first-year ‘plants’ lectures. I really enjoy them & so, judging by appearances, do most of the students \ud83d\ude42 But every year, when I ask for an indication of where they might be in terms of prior knowledge, then judging by the show of hands at least a third (& sometimes more) of the class tell me that they didn’t study the plant-related standards in year 12 of secondary school. (Either that, or they don’t remember<\/i> studying them, which is much the same for my purposes.) This means I get to tread the fine line between losing that third of the class & boring the rest, who remember at least some of what they learned. And I don’t get any complaints to that effect in the end-of-semester paper appraisals, so I guess I manage to do that OK.<\/p>\n

But it is a bit of a concern. I mean, plants are wonderful organisms in their own right, quite apart from the fact that the flowering plants, in particular, can be the inspiration for some beautiful works of art:<\/p>\n

 \"New<\/a><\/p>\n

 This one’s a Tiffany window (Autumn Landscape<\/i>) from the Cambridge 2000 image gallery<\/a>. And then there’s this quilt (which I want<\/i>!) by Leonore Crawford, which my brother saw & photographed<\/a> in an exhibition in Beaujolais, France:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

And of course plants, like all living things, have a natural beauty all their own. This shows the transport tissues in the root of a plant called Smilax<\/i>:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a cross-section through the tissues of a leaf:<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

And I could go on & on.<\/p>\n

But quite apart from all of that, plants – with their ancient ancestors, the blue-green algae – changed the nature of our planet. Without aerobic photosynthesis churning out oxygen as a waste product, there’d be no oxygen-rich atmosphere<\/a>, no biosphere as we know it, and the complex plant, animal, & fungal life around us could not have evolved. They underpin most food chains & are of enormous economic and ecological significance. It’s hard to see how you could study ecological restoration, for example, without at least a passing acquaintance with the plant kingdom.<\/p>\n

So – back to my initial question: why don’t more students study plants?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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