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Human uses of plants include both practical uses, such as for food, clothing, and medicine, and symbolic uses, such as in art, mythology and literature. The reliable provision of food through agriculture is the basis of civilization. The study of plant uses by native peoples is ethnobotany, while economic botany focuses on modern cultivated plants.
Medicinal plants. The bark of willow trees contains salicylic acid, the active metabolite of aspirin, and has been used for millennia to relieve pain and reduce fever. [1] Medicinal plants, also called medicinal herbs, have been discovered and used in traditional medicine practices since prehistoric times. Plants synthesize hundreds of chemical ...
Plants are the primary producers in most terrestrial ecosystems and form the basis of the food web in those ecosystems. [82] Plants form about 80% of the world biomass at about 450 gigatonnes (4.4 × 10 11 long tons; 5.0 × 10 11 short tons) of carbon. [83]
Paraherbalism is the pseudoscientific use of extracts of plant or animal origin as supposed medicines or health-promoting agents. [1] [6] [7] Phytotherapy differs from plant-derived medicines in standard pharmacology because it does not isolate and standardize the compounds from a given plant believed to be biologically active.
Plant nutrition is the study of the chemical elements and compounds necessary for plant growth and reproduction, plant metabolism and their external supply. In its absence the plant is unable to complete a normal life cycle, or that the element is part of some essential plant constituent or metabolite. This is in accordance with Justus von ...
The plant has been used for centuries in the South Pacific to make a ceremonial drink with sedative and anesthetic properties, with potential for causing liver injury. Piscidia erythrina / Piscidia piscipula: Jamaica dogwood: The plant is used in traditional medicine for the treatment of insomnia and anxiety, despite serious safety concerns.
Plants with more than one significant human use may be listed in multiple categories. Plants are considered domesticated when their life cycle , behavior , or appearance has been significantly altered as a result of being under artificial selection by humans for multiple generations (see the main article on domestication for more information).
Flora ( pl.: floras or florae) is all the plant life present in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring ( indigenous) native plants. The corresponding term for animals is fauna, and for fungi, it is funga. [1] Sometimes bacteria and fungi are also referred to as flora as in the terms gut flora or skin flora.