Plants play a huge role in the existence of our planet, as well as the direct existence of life on Earth. However, why is life on Earth impossible without plants? After all, it would seem that the absence of trees in dense urban areas and modern megacities only affects the fact that the areas become not entirely cozy, and also do not have places for recreation. We will look into this issue today.
4 reasons why life on Earth is impossible without plants
- Oxygen production
Since school, most of us remember that plants serve people and the entire globe by producing oxygen. However, most people are quite skeptical about this fact, without thinking that such “help” from plants can be significant. However, if you look at the actual data, you can find out that just one single tree is capable of releasing such an amount of oxygen during the day that will be enough for three people to live during the same day. Now imagine how much oxygen a whole forest or even a small forest belt produces in a day/month/year.
- Carbon dioxide (CO2) absorption
Another important function for which plants are responsible on our planet is the absorption of carbon dioxide. Of all the objects present on Earth, it is plants that are able to perform such “work” and cleanse our atmosphere of unusable CO2 gases, because if its level in the atmosphere exceeded permissible standards, this would all lead to an unfavorable outcome for all living things.
- Soil formation
We should not forget that plants are directly involved in the process of soil formation. And this is one of the most important processes occurring on our planet, because without it we would not have such fertile lands, and we would not be able to grow all the products we need, vegetables and fruits, plants used in medicine and pharmacology.
- Animal world
Finally, we need to pay attention to the animal world, because it also could not exist without plants on Earth. The fact is that many animals, including wild ones, eat plants, being herbivores. That is, if there was no food for them on the planet, they would simply die out. However, plants also affect predatory animals, because they, in turn, feed on other representatives of the animal kingdom, which, as we have already said, would not exist without plants. Accordingly, extinction would also await predators.
This is why life on Earth is impossible without plants.
We wake up one morning, go out into the street and see... In the city, it’s unlikely that anything will catch our eye the first time, but outside of it we’ll immediately notice - there are houses around, pillars, a road, and besides them, there’s not much to see what to catch. There are no trees or grass. Just bare earth and asphalt everywhere, animals roaming in search of food and birds darting across the sky...
And all this because all the plants have disappeared. That's it - since they are not found anywhere else on Earth. And what awaits us in the future? It would seem - well, no, and okay, we’ll get used to it and continue to live. But in reality, everything is not so simple.
Of course, vegetarians will be the first to experience the shock - plant foods will first jump in price and cost much more than gold. Very quickly she will be gone. We will have to switch to animal and synthetic food, but there simply won’t be enough industrial capacity to cover demand. Hunger is what awaits humanity in the first few days. A half-starved existence on animal and artificial food will not last long.
Plants are the most important link in the food chain. All forms of life on Earth depend on plants in one way or another. Herbivores eat only plants. A huge mass of the population of rivers, lakes and oceans eat various algae. It would seem - so what, there will be no cows - they will learn how to make artificial milk. Is it a big problem? Yes, it's great!
All species of animals that feed exclusively on plant foods will become extinct very quickly. Only the predators will remain. For some time they will have food - those same half-living herbivores, and then they will simply begin to destroy each other. As they say, hunger is not a problem. Moreover, starving humanity will begin to intensively exterminate first domestic animals, and then everyone in a row, and they are more dangerous than all predators combined. When they end, what awaits us? Maybe cannibalism?
The day will come when there will not be a single animal and not a single person left on Earth, except perhaps flies and some other insects, for which there will still be food left in the form of the corpses of the last dead. What will remain are bacteria and protozoa that feed on inorganic food. Perhaps, in millions of years, new forms of animal and plant life will emerge from them. Or maybe they will be something in between, taking into account this zigzag of evolution...
In light of total extinction from starvation, is it worth mentioning such an important role of plants as oxygen production? Hardly. Hunger will overtake us faster than the oxygen will run out, especially considering the rapidly decreasing number of living people. People will have much more serious concerns to go to work under the threat of complete extinction. It is unlikely that factories will continue to smoke the sky - soon there will simply be no one to work for them. Accordingly, all environmentally harmful transport will also stop.
But billions of dead animals and people dying on the streets will create another problem - the threat of global epidemics. They will greatly accelerate the process of destruction of the world as we know it. So you shouldn’t be so careless with “non-living” bushes and herbs. Without them we are nothing.
Topic: “If there were no plants”
Compiled by: Prudnikova Maria Viktorovna
Target: Systematize and generalize children’s knowledge about the importance of plants in human life and the entire environment.
Tasks:- Teach children to listen carefully and answer questions.
- Teach children to draw appropriate conclusions about the importance of plants in the life and health of their body and the environment.
- To instill in children a caring attitude towards plants.
Preliminary work: observation of indoor plants, plants on the territory of the kindergarten.
The amazing world of plants is diverse and great. Plants surround us everywhere. They grow in forests and meadows, in parks and squares. They can be found in rivers, lakes and ponds, in low valleys and high mountains. And what a variety of plants people grow in meadows and cities, in gardens and greenhouses, on balconies and window sills!
Plants are around us always and everywhere, huge and very tiny, long-lived plants and plants whose life is very short; bright, whimsical and simple, sometimes even unnoticeable. And they are all beautiful and attractive in their own way. This is how N. Zabolotsky spoke with love about the most common plants:
I was brought up by harsh nature, than a simple plant is more common,
It's enough for me to notice at your feet, the more it excites me
Dandelion is a downy ball, its first leaves appear
Plantain hard blade. At dawn of a spring day.
In the state of daisies at the edge,
Where the stream, panting, sings,
I would lie there all my life until the morning,
Throwing my face back into the sky...
Where did you see the plants that the poet wrote about?
Name your favorite plants.
How many of you love the plant world?
Tell us about one of your favorite plants.
What benefits do plants bring to humans?
It is very difficult to imagine life without plants.
Plants oxygenate the air we breathe. These are the lungs of our planet. Every day we use either the plants themselves or the products that we get from them for food.
Many objects that surround us and that we use in everyday life are also made from plants.
Do you know what our clothes are made of?
What are notebooks and books made of?
What material are the furniture, window frames, and doors made of?
Result:
Now think about the importance of plants in nature?
Can animals and other living creatures live without plants? Why?
Animals, like people, breathe oxygen. Plants provide home and food for many animals. But plants create food for themselves using sunlight from the air, because plants are living organisms.
Conclusion:
If all the plants disappeared, there would be no green cover of grass that protects and preserves the earth. There would be no trees, whose roots hold the soil, preventing new ravines from forming. The climate on Earth would change, and herbivores would have nothing to eat. There would be no plant food, medicinal herbs, materials for building houses and furniture... Trees and all plants produce oxygen, which all living things breathe. People, animals, birds, fish cannot live without it.
If all plants disappeared, there would be no life on Earth.
The planet would be dead!
If there were no plants on Earth, it is difficult to say what life on our planet would look like now. However, these silent friends accompanied man at all stages of his development, providing him with food, fuel and medicine free of charge. And people appreciated it at first. Reported by "Earth Chronicles of Life".
Many peoples believed that trees and grasses had a soul, and therefore did not break branches for fun. Sometimes even entire groves were declared sacred, and it was considered a great sin to harm any of these trees. According to the religious worldviews of people from different countries, human souls move into trees after death. Buddhists, for example, believe that before incarnating in the body of the Buddha, his soul spent 23 lives in various trees. The aborigines of Australia can even clearly indicate which tree the soul of their deceased relative settled in, and the people of China plant trees in cemeteries so that the souls of the deceased can find shelter there.
Over time, people, accustomed to the benefits of civilization, began to take a consumerist attitude towards their green helpers, and massive deforestation and cluttering former protected areas with modern buildings became the norm for our time. However, specialists involved in plant research are increasingly discovering amazing properties and facts that make us think that plants are special forms of life that can think, feel and communicate in their own way.
Research into the intelligence of plants began with the American Clive Baxter, who came up with the idea of attaching lie detector sensors to the leaves of a philodendron growing in the laboratory. At first, nothing special happened - the recorder remained motionless. But as soon as an egg was broken nearby, the sensors reacted to some kind of impulse, and the recorder drew a peak. The same situation repeated itself when the laboratory staff decided to boil shrimp - judging by the readings of the device, the plant “shuddered” every time a living creature was dipped into boiling water. Inexplicably, on a telepathic level, plants can feel what is happening to the person who takes care of them: watering them, caring for them. The same philodendron that was “examined” on a lie detector also responded with the device’s readings in the case when Baxter cut himself and burned his finger with iodine. The plant felt the person’s pain and empathized with him!
Recent research by scientists has revealed that plants can talk! In the experiment, using highly sensitive instruments that are used to study the antennae of insects, specialists were able to hear “clicks” with a frequency of 220 Hz, which were emitted by the roots of young corn placed in water. Moreover, if the same signals were sent to the roots, then the plant changed the direction of its growth movement, and instead of growing down, the roots of the corn tended towards the source of the sound. Over the past decades, during which various works have been carried out to study the properties of plants, it has been established that they are capable of generating certain chemical signals and can also independently study them.
Thus, zoologist Van Halen, who studied antelopes and giraffes in South Africa, noticed a strange pattern: giraffes, very picky in their choice of food, ate leaves from acacia trees that were located at a great distance from each other. Antelopes ate all the acacias in a row, and it was in herds of antelopes that the mortality rate was much higher than that of giraffes. Although the acacias belonged to the same species. As it turned out, trees from which animals began to eat leaves produce ethylene. This substance, released into the air, is caught by other acacias, and they intensively begin to produce a toxic substance - tannin, which destroys the liver of ruminants.
The triggering of such an “alarm system” in plants leads to the fact that sometimes a large number of antelopes die among the lush but poisonous greenery. Plants, just like people, can feel pain, love and dislike someone, and remember certain events. One of the pioneers in organic gardening, J. Rodale, having heard that the death of the mother plant can affect the daughter shoots, conducted an experiment on cabbage seedlings. In his experiment, the gardener cut down and burned a head of cabbage - the “mother”. As a result, the daughter seedlings experienced a disruption in their normal growth. An interesting hypothesis was put forward by Viktor Adamenko, a Russian physicist, who suggested that plants that have witnessed crimes may well help justice.
In practice, such an experiment was carried out by physicist Thomas Etter and psychiatrist Arstrid H. Esser, who, during the interrogation of one woman, used ... a houseplant as a witness. Moreover, a green bush connected to a lie detector signaled that the version of the crime presented to the accused did not correspond to the truth. For a long time, people believed that plants could understand human speech, and talked to them. Magicians and herbalists were especially successful in this, who were well aware that each plant has its own soul and mind. In some places in villages a special method of intimidating a “lazy” tree, which for some reason does not want to bear fruit, is still used. At the same time, the owner of the estate approaches the tree with an ax in his hands and threatens to cut it down next year if it does not “correct.”
Many people consider this method to be effective, since quite often a frightened tree finally brings the long-awaited harvest. The method of “heart-to-heart conversations” when breeding new plant varieties was widely used in his practice by Luther Burbank, a breeder from California. Through long conversations with plants and giving them a visual image of how they should grow, Burbank was able to breed a needleless cactus, a white mulberry with transparent berries, a white daisy and several other types of plants. The specialist himself explained this by saying that when conducting such conversations, a certain vibration is created that is picked up by the plants. And since most plants are very responsive and trusting, they are happy to make contact with a person if he addresses them with good words. Do plants have intelligence?
Many consider this assumption simply ridiculous. However, the facts speak for themselves. Surely many have seen how the tendrils of peas curl, how the shoots of ivy and other climbing plants cling to the support. A simple experiment allows you to be convinced that plants not only think, but also see (in their own way, of course). It is enough to place a stick near the shoot of a climbing plant - and in the near future the tendrils will “notice” this and rush to the desired support. If we complicate the experiment and offer climbing stems two options of hooks for support - one curved and the other straight, then the plants will choose the curved hook, since it will be much easier and more reliable to catch on and hold on to it. The rationality of plants is also supported by the experience carried out with the sundew, a predatory insectivorous plant known to everyone since school years. When an insect was brought close to the sundew on the tip of a needle, the plant began to anticipate “dinner”: it turned its leaves and hairs towards the treat.
However, if in the same way something inedible was offered to the intelligent plant, then it remained motionless. Shrubs growing in the arid steppe zone, in search of moisture, spread their roots underground as far as possible. However, if another bush grows nearby, then the growth of roots in that direction stops, and neighboring plants do not interfere with each other. At this stage, specialists in the field of plant neurobiology are constantly coming, through scientific and experimental means, to the discovery of those immutable truths that our distant ancestors knew without the use of cutting-edge equipment. Namely, this is the knowledge that any plant is a representative of a special form of life that can think and feel, remember and forgive. Therefore, you should not treat them consumeristly, considering plants created solely for the benefit of humans.
what if...
What if... plants disappear on Earth?
(online version; the original magazine version was published under the pseudonym N.D.)
Gennady Shandikov
From space our Earth looks blue, but from a bird's eye view it looks green from the plants that cover the land. We call these green plants in all their diversity - meadows, forests, African jungles and the Amazonian jungle - the “living lungs” of the planet. But billions of years ago, both the Earth itself and its atmosphere were completely different from what they are now. In that distant era, neither animals nor plants existed. There was also no oxygen, without which the modern diversity of life is impossible.
The very first oxygen in the air envelope of the Earth appeared during the life of microscopic organisms - blue-green algae. Now the main role of oxygen suppliers is performed by higher plants. It is thanks to the green color, or rather the plant pigment chlorophyll, that over the millions of years of their existence, plants have provided the necessary amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, sufficient for the emergence of a new, more developed form of life - the animal kingdom, including humans.
Chlorophyll is that precious green substance that we basically have to pray to. With its help, photosynthesis is carried out, during which plants absorb solar energy, absorb carbon dioxide and water, releasing free oxygen into the atmosphere. This magical cycle of substances provides that same 21 percent of life-giving oxygen in the atmosphere. Imagine that in just one year, plants consume 200 billion tons of carbon dioxide and release almost 150 billion tons of oxygen. In total, over millions of years of photosynthetic activity, more than a million billion tons of oxygen have accumulated in the air envelope of the Earth - this is a number with fifteen zeros! Unfortunately, this figure is steadily decreasing every year. Scientists are sounding the alarm as the supply of oxygen to the atmosphere, according to some estimates, is now 6 billion tons less than its consumption. Forests, which once covered more than half the earth's surface, have been reduced by almost half over the past hundred years. The reason for this is economic activity, uncontrolled deforestation and fires caused by the same person.
What if one fine, or rather terrible, day, plants disappear from the face of the earth or their numbers reach such a critical mass that the green “lungs of the planet” will cease to function? Humanity will begin to suffocate. And not only from a lack of oxygen, but also from carbon dioxide poisoning, the amount of which in the atmosphere will rapidly increase. “Altitude sickness” will descend from three-thousand-meter mountain peaks to the plains. At first, the coming crisis will be least felt by the population of South America, where more than fifty percent of all tropical forests, the taiga of Siberia or the forest zone of Canada are concentrated. But, nevertheless, climbers, divers, and also mountain dwellers trained to withstand the lack of oxygen, somewhere in Nepal or Bolivia, will survive the longest. Death from asphyxia, or suffocation - this is how inglorious the end of humanity can become. Of course, a person will fight for his life. He will have to set up giant oxygen factories and live under sealed glass domes. Oxygen cans will become the most popular currency. A scenario similar to this of oxygen starvation of humanity was once described by science fiction writer Alexander Belyaev in his book “Air Seller”.
Or maybe it’s easier for us to come to our senses before it’s too late? And so that our descendants do not turn into those same potential buyers of air, should we try to live in harmony with green nature now?