Misguided assumptions about plants

Although growing popular interest in the environment and in conservation is apparent, our general knowledge and recognition of plants and their interaction with both human society and the planet and our appreciation that they are more than 'inanimate' objects is extremely limited. This can lead to some surprising, and sometimes unwise, assumptions of which most of us are guilty at one time or another. 


Common Name

We overlook the possibility that a plant could have any other common name than that by which we know it – apart from perhaps a counterpart in some foreign language. Most names are likely to have been handed down from generation to generation without formal record and very many of them will not have been included here. However the entries still show that a species can have more than 50 common names in any language, and that the same name used in one country or locality (speaking the same language, or even a different one) may be used elsewhere for a completely different species. In addition the common name can sometimes 'mask' for us the existence of many other closely related species. For example, using the names mint or euphorbia can give the erroneous  impression that there is only one mint or one euphorbia.


Plant Appearance

We tend not to appreciate that the familiar height, colour or shape of the plant may be different elsewhere and/or in other contexts. Something growing in one habitat can change appearance and qualities when subjected to a different climate, cultivation techniques, selection for novel characteristics in gsrdens, etc. A simple example is the potted small rubber plant (Ficus elastica) familiar in so many Western offices and homes. In its natural surroundings in Indomalaysia it is a huge tree (which can reach, although this is not specified in its Biography, over 100 ft./30m. in height).


Plant Qualities

Yet another common fallacy is the amazing contention (if you think it through) that, compared with a processed/synthetic version, a plant that is fresh or has grown naturally must be good for you – and by extension is harmless. Our seemingly casual approach to alternative medicines and hedgerow plants needs, perhaps, a little caution, as warnings included in some of the Biographies would indicate.

A final example of unquerying acceptance, even arrogance, which stands in stark contrast to the previous fallacy, is a view held in some quarters that synthetic medicines can always duplicate and/or improve upon those derived from natural plants. Quinine is a sad example here. When a synthetic form of quinine was first produced successfully, and appeared to copy most of the natural product’s properties, husbandry in the wild and cultivation of cinchona trees (Cinchona officinalis, from which natural quinine is/was obtained) dwindled dramatically. But a drug obtained from natural sources is not always easily copied in the laboratory and malaria has displayed determined resistance to many subsequent synthetic alternatives – with the result that there are now insufficient trees to meet any renewed demand for the natural ingredient. ([It should be mentioned that reports at the beginning of the 21st Century indicate yet another laboratory ‘breakthrough’ – and a new and successful synthetic version for treating some forms of malaria.) Synthetic preparations are not confined, of course, to the medical world. The flavouring vanilla (Vanilla planifolia) offers a similar significant example for the food industry – although in this case the ‘blood bank’ of both wild and cultivated vanilla plants has, fortunately, remained undecimated. A synthetic copy has proved to be elusive, even now.