At one level, it is a daily absurdity how unaware of plants most of us are. I am wearing cotton jeans, writing on a page made of pine pulp and staring at a screen reinforced with wood fibers, sitting on a rock maple chair at an oak table, fueled by a breakfast of wheat and broccoli and peppercorns, and breathing air that depends on plants reliably playing their part in the oxygen cycle. . . . But for many of us plants are little more than scenery on the one hand and resources on the other. This is what biology educators sometimes call "plant-blindness."

These same plants have often served as a guide for modern pharmacology.