Plant Homelands

A few years ago, I saw a TV program (it may have been Nova or a Discovery Channel show) that examined the original homelands of different species of plants that are cultivated as food, medicine, energy, clothing, or for other purposes. The aim of the program was to show that the diversity within a species is by far the greatest within the relatively small area of its origin. And that diversity, which can be used to develop new strains of plants that are more adaptable to different environments and more resistant to plant diseases, is being threatened on a world-wide scale as these homelands are cleared by the encroachment of human activity. An example in the program was made of coffee and its natural place of origin in Ethiopia. At least in that place, there was interest in preserving the natural habitat of coffee plants that grew in the wild. But even then, they had to contend with war conditions that threatened their native wild-growing coffee plants.

But do we know where the homelands are for the myriad other species of plants that we depend on so much? It’s my guess that too many of them have already been wiped out, leaving only some limited strains that we depend too heavily on. I’m no expert on botany or agriculture, but I do remember learning about the Ireland Potato Famine of 1848 and how it was caused by almost exclusive use of one particular variety of potato that was suddenly decimated by disease, destroying Ireland’s chief source of food at that time. There is concern today that many of our staple grains, such as wheat and corn, are grown in mass amounts with very limited genetic diversity, putting them and enormous populations at risk from potential grain epidemics in the future that could destroy production on a global scale.

In biology, an endemic species is one that found in only one specific area, or biota. A very large amount of these species are endemic to the rain forests of the world, in particular the Amazon rain forests in Brazil, many of which are going by the wayside, lost forever in the pursuit of farming and economic development. There is no telling how many different plants there could be ultimately used, especially in medicine, if they can just be permitted to exist in their own unique habitats there.

I know that a subgroup of biology is dedicated to the study of species’ homelands, but I can’t remember its name. Maybe it comes under the general classification of “biodiversity”, which would be a logical place to put it. It’s important, with our upward-spiraling population, mass-farming, danger of new fast-spreading diseases, economic development in rural areas, and the tragic continuing plague of war, to quickly find the areas that are still intact, preserve them as much as possible, and collect as many living samples of the plants in question for preservation and study.