Plants

There are approximately 400,000 known plant species on earth and certainly thousands more yet to be discovered. From those known 400,000 it is argued that (more than) half of them are edible for humans. But humans have chosen to only eat 200 species, pretty unadventurous for humans who claim that they are adventurous beings. Approximately two thousand plant species are discovered every year. The question you may ask yourself is, why must we care about the plants?  The answer to this question is not very complicated yet not understood by many. Plants in relation with microbes in the soil are the foundation to our ecosystems and basically the foundations of the world’s survival and also ours. It is known that plants are the providers of the oxygen we breathe. That is not all, they provide us with delicious fruits, nuts, leaves and also other edible parts of them. Besides being edible, most of them serve for medicinal purposes in traditional and some pharmaceutical drugs and medicines...

Looking at the two mango trees standing side by side I wondered, can they talk? Some may call me crazy for wondering this, but hear me out. Plants are alive and they grow and multiply. Fruit bearing plants give fruits at the right time each year, flowers know when to bloom, other trees know where to grow so that they can strive. Most plants also live in harmony with each other, a perfect example is the Amazon rainforest. After putting all this information together I had to wonder, how do they talk? Because in the years I have wandered this planet I did not once hear two trees having a heart to heart conversation. Do they have a “Treebook” for messaging or a “Timber” for dating?   Although plants can not move or run away, they have their special way of communicating. These methods of communicating happen right before our eyes and we do not even notice. One of those methods is happening when grass is being cut. Strangely, the sweet smell when cutting grass is a distress call fro...

“We don’t need to plant trees in Suriname, because we have enough!”  were the words I heard during a lecture about forestry. I was dumbstruck and could not believe what I heard. As she captured my full attention, she continued to say that even though there is an exponential rise in the logging industry of Suriname, it is not posing any threat to the rainforest. It was one of the times i had to think to myself, “ are people who think like this, qualified to make legislative decisions regarding the rainforest and the environment?” The world is celebrating World Environment Day on Friday, June 5 2020 and  celebrated the International Day of Biological DIversity on Friday, May 22 2020. These two days are some of the days where the world stands still and appreciates the wonders of nature and also look at the problems that may have catastrophic impacts on our livelihoods, ecosystems and also nature itself. With the world being in an environmental crisis, it is more than crucial to ...