There is no getting around it. We animals account for a paltry 0.3% of the planet’s biomass while plants add up to 85%. It is obvious, therefore, that every story on this planet has a plant as its protagonist. Our world is a green world; Earth is the planet of plants. And when, with just a little training, we are able to look at the world without seeing it solely as humanity’s playground, we cannot help but notice the ubiquity of plants. They are everywhere and their stories are inevitably wound up with ours. As every tree in a forest is linked to all the others by an underground network of roots, uniting them to form a super organism, so plants constitute the nervous system, the plan that is the “greenprint” of our world. Not to see this plan, or even worse, to ignore its existence, is one of the most serious threats to the survival of our species.
The neurobiologist Stefano Mancuso is back with a fascinating book, about the greenprint of our world. He does it through unforgettable stories starring plants; stories combining an inimitable narrative voice and remarkable scientific rigor. From the story of the red spruce that gave Stradivarius the wood for his 14 violins, to the Kauri tree-stump, kept alive for decades by the interconnected root system of other trees living nearby. From the story of the slipperiness of the banana skin to the plant that solved the “crime of the century” (the kidnapping and murder of the infant son of the celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh). In that case, in fact, for the first time in history, botanical tests and analyses led to the identification of the perpetrator of the crime and were admitted as evidence at the trial. The kidnapper was betrayed by the rungs of a wooden ladder.Mancuso’s stories convey the urgency of preserving this greenprint, and warn that ignoring this green existence is sure to result in dire consequences, for our world and our survival as a species. Illuminating the interconnectedness of plant life with that of humanity, PLANTING OUR WORLD is kaleidoscopic look at the importance of flora.
