The Story of Life Begins with Plants

William Friedman teaches evolutionary biology at Harvard University. He explains how plants evolved and how they helped the human organism.

Research

His work is to understand the process of Fertilization and studies how the seed is nourished. This is the big mystery of flowering plants, how they nourish the seed from a tissue called endosperm. It has two endosperms, it occurs in rice grains, corn etc. Without endosperm in plants, humans would not be here.

The extent of plant life on Earth and their development dependency

It is estimated that there are 3,50,000 or 4,00,000 different species of plants. There is also a fact that about 2 billion years ago there was a one-celled photosynthetic organism. It used to swim in the water. But the green algae started making space. They developed the ability to live in a dry environment. This took millions of years. Earlier the plants of the earth were a few centimeters in height. The trees have emerged only 3.8 million years ago. There was a time when the plants of the earth used to be up to our waists. It took ages for them to grow taller, build their circle and take support from the weight. The flowers we see today came into being around 13.5 million years back. Going back a little further in this evolutionary story, it is found that the energy of light is absorbed in plants. They had learned the trick to converting to ionic bonds, without plants there would be no story on earth. Plants gave energy to the life system. If they did not do this, then we would have nothing to eat. Plants help build carbon dioxide levels, prepare life circles and help in geochemistry and rain etc. On earth, there is a dialogue between the living and the non-living where every change affects each other.

Social biology

It is an idea that organisms i.e, creatures affect each other. Relationships are formed based on this. People often believe that neuron is needed for behaviour but the behaviour is not related to thinking it is genetically programmed. Plants have evolved in such a way that they relate to their relatives which can help them to survive. The process does not happen by chance. The mother can also check the qualities of her child and can also find out the future father. But this is not contemplative behaviour. This is because of their ability to trace relationships.

Future of plants amidst climate change

Climate change is also affecting the plant world. Because of man, the whole earth is facing climate change. Trees are cut, forests are burnt, and animals are reared in their place, we should pay attention to change this behaviour otherwise man will be lost. There are millions of species on the earth with which we should maintain a brotherhood. It’s a journey of four billion years. From the effort of life to us. We have already done a lot of damage. We should think of wondrous things like plants.