Plants that changed our lives

In his book 'Seeds of Change', Henry Hobhouse relates stories about 'Five plants that transformed mankind', namely quinine, sugar, tea, cotton and the potato. The book came to my mind in 2017 when I was asked to write a monthly series of articles about plants for several magazines. The more I read and thought about the subject the more intrigued I became about the influence that plants have been on mankind's history: I thought that Hobhouse's book would be a good source of information about five plants, but it presented a challenge. Magazine editors mostly want feature articles to be limited to 800 to 1000 words: Hobhouse wrote some 22000 words about each plant! Incorporating his fascinating facts into maximum 1000 word articles would be a major précising challenge. Furthermore, I never rely on one source of information for my articles, so the more my researches discovered about the plants the greater the challenge would be. And that wasn't the entire problem. The prospect was for the series of articles to run for more than five months - in fact it continued for two years. What other plants have significantly influenced our history? Where would all the information come from? It was an interesting and rewarding challenge for someone who is fascinated by plantsThe more research I did the more I came to think that there is a story to tell about every plant. That's an exaggeration, but there are fascinating stories to tell about the way many plants have influenced the lives of our ancestors, from the earliest hominids, and continue to influence our lives today. The book, 'Plants that changed our lives' is a compilation of articles about twenty one plants, distilled from information gleaned from many sources and first published in magazines in the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland between 2017 and 2019. I hope that my enthusiasm for the subject shines through my scribbles and they will enthuse at least some of my readers. Maybe you will be one of them.
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