Economic plants

The most basic biological human dependency on plants is for food (staple crops) and drink (beer, wine, spirits, tea, coffee, cola) – these have been the traditional source of energy and fluids needed to support life. This web site examines several aspects of this dependency:

The article food places food consumption within the context of sustainability and daily living. The article Agraria investigates the cultural context of the emergence of civilization that was part of the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution. Origins of agriculture discusses the various centres of domestication out of which modern civilizations were formed; also the relative advantages and disadvantages of the hunter-gatherer, pastoralist, farming, and industrial modes of existence. The article on staple crops is an historical account of the foods that have supported human lives since the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution. Plants for people a general list of plants of economic significance. In addition, there are descriptions of individual plants of global economic importance in the section on economic plants.

For a comprehensive list of the world’s plants see the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew web site which invites us to browse 1,421,000 global plant names, 199,900 detailed descriptions, and 374,100 images (5 May 2023).

The Royal Horticultural Society with its continuing global influence on horticulture has an authoritative list of ornamental plants. For plant common names in non-English languages and scripts see the Multilingual Multiscripted Plant Name Database.

Plants for people

The article plants for people provides a summary account of the plants that have been of major importance to humanity throughout history. It is a global record that begins with the staple plants that comprised the sustenance diet, and first domesticated plants of independent centres of the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution. It then moves on to the second-order plants of history that were not the staples necessary for survival but which were nevertheless considered highly desirable or ‘luxury’ possessions.

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