Plants That Changed The World! Michael Holland, June's meeting

 

Did you guess a plant that changed the world ? I certainly did not but Michael Holland, our expert ecologist speaker last month did. Michael’s talk was an absolute eye opener to the importance of plants in our world and the role they play in our daily lives. We tend to take the natural world for granted but as we now know the world needs protecting from the technologies that we have developed.

Michael told us that there is an estimated 500,000 different plants in world, and as gardeners we know about different plant varieties, but that is a huge number of plants. Michael explained the importance of algae, which I have never thought much about other than I regarded it as a problem in a pond I once had, but algae changed the atmosphere of the world giving rise to land plants and providing half of the worlds annual oxygen supply so think about that next time you clear any algae from your pond.   

I found Michael’s talk most engaging, providing wonderful slides and he explained complex issues in a straight forward way. If you would like to know more about how plants have changed the world and the way they affect our lives then you many be interested in Michael’s book, I ate Sunshine for Breakfast, published by Flying Eye Books. Our thanks go out to Michael for a brilliant evening.