Plants & History

Ever since Early Man rubbed two sticks together to make fire, plants have played a vital role in the history of mankind.
The cultivation of grain changed nomads into village dwellers, wooden boats allowed civilisations to explore new lands, and precious spices were used from earliest times to trade between nations. Later on, it was Christopher Columbus’s search for new spice routes that led to his discovery of the Americas and their colonisation by Europeans.
Plants have been used as medicines, but also as instruments of death. The famous Greek philosopher Socrates drank hemlock when sentenced to death in ancient Athens. The Roman emperor Claudius was murdered using a plate of lethal mushrooms.
A plant allegedly even influenced the laws of physics! Our understanding of the way that gravity works came about because Isaac Newton saw that apple fall in 1665!
Plants have had far-reaching effects on many civilisations, the impact of which we still feel today. The slave trade arose out of the need to supply the sugar cane plantations in the West Indies with cheap labour. And the failure of the potato crop due to blight was a contributory factor in the Irish famine of the 1840s, which in turn led to mass emigration to America.

See the top 10 plants that we think have made the biggest difference to this category.

Thanks to: http://www.plantsandus.org.uk