Why Are Plants And The Rest Of The World's Biodiversity Important?

Our lives as human beings are truly gifts. We arrive on a planet that has been seemingly prepared for us: everything we need (and so much more) is here, made possible in large part by plants.

Although not something that regularly crosses most of our minds, plants are the supporters, either directly or indirectly, of almost all macroscopic life, including humans and spiders. One could argue that the sun, or the air, or water, or our geological foundations are actually the ultimate physical sources of life, and I would agree, but plants are the ones who have taken these ingredients and manipulated them in a way that has made possible life the likes of which the world would not know otherwise. Plants are incredible transformers and producers, using sunlight, air, water, and rocks to generate complex living, moving, sensing organisms that in turn support countless other organisms.

Air, water, sunlight, and a bit of soil are all it takes to produce this incredible pink pineapple (Ananas bracteatus)!

Without plants, Kona Kai caterpillars would have nothing to munch on.

The fact that plants provide so much for us is one of the most compelling reasons for why we as humans think we should care about the health of the earth's natural environment. Plants provide the oxygen we need to breathe and the food we eat; they've turned much of the rocky surface of the earth into soil that forms the foundation of productive croplands; they are the substance of which fuels like coal, oil, and ethanol are made; they provide countless medicines, materials, seasonings, and fragrances; and they offer us many lessons we can learn for how to live better lives on earth. Certainly, it is hard to argue that plants aren't crucial to our survival and well-being, and therefore worth protecting.

Compounds derived from rosy periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus) are used to treat lymphomas and childhood leukemia.

However, if we move beyond these anthropocentric considerations of how plants and other creatures are useful to us as rationale for their protection, we find that, like us, plants are elegantly formed, incredibly complex living entities. Their contributions to global life-supporting systems are beautiful in harmonious function, and when you consider how the creatures of the earth all contribute, like tens of thousands of musicians, in their own way to a symphonic living world so much larger than their individual selves, it is truly cause to marvel. The greater natural world, of which all individual species play a part, is a wonder beyond comprehension and adequate appreciation.

The blue-coated seeds of the traveler's tree (Ravenala madagascariensis) are easily found by lemurs, who see blue much easier than red, orange, or yellow.

Although I certainly think the argument that we should live in a way to preserve as many plants as possible because of the goods and services they offer us is a good one, I don't think it's the best. What if we end up finding synthetic substitutes for everything we get from plants today - does that mean we then have no reason to care about the survival of plants? I think not. The purest relationship is not based on what you are able to get from others, but rather on who/what they are. If your best friend doesn't offer you any material benefits, they should still be your best friend if you are truly friends. Similarly, if your spouse became handicapped, you wouldn't abandon them because they can no longer contribute to the mortgage payments or chores around the house as before if you truly loved them. When it comes to plants and other creatures, I think they have a similar value that transcends goods and services and that our appreciation for them should not be determined by what they can and do provide us, but should be based on who/what they are: unique and astoundingly beautiful wonders of life. This reason alone makes them worthy of my respect and admiration, and in turn, my great interest in their existence.

Like this Austrocylindropuntia subulata, not all creatures are useful to humans or extravagantly showy.

The death of a species can be seen as a tragedy because of what goods and services, many perhaps unknown, we might lose from it, but I would say that if we have the right perspective, we would see the loss as much more than that. Extinction of a species, much like the death of a loved one, is tragic because it involves the permanent loss of a living creature who embodied life in a beautiful and intricate way no other creature did; and now that it is gone, that unique incarnation of life is, too. The  earth itself is now no longer the same; something of its beauty and function has been lost.

A frog resting on a leaf of one of our bromeliads.

More than any other species on earth, humans have incredible power to destroy or protect life. When contemplating the natural world, we understand that a world with a greater diversity and abundance of life is better than a world with only a few hundred species deemed worthy of continued existence because of their utility to humans. For better or worse, we are in a position to determine what the earth will become in the years ahead, and I think that if we are to make the right decisions in the coming decades and centuries, it will be most important to encourage humans to take time to marvel at the wonders of life (protist, plant, fungus, animal, and human) that surround them, understanding that each (even those we don't particularly "like") as an incredibly complex incarnation of life unlike any other with functions and relationships in the wider world far beyond our comprehension. When we focus on this, rather than on simply the utility of biodiversity for humans, we should feel an intense desire to use our unique position of power as a species as an opportunity to be guardians of this life rather than destroyers of it.

A dead coconut palm serves as a home for a family of red-bellied woodpeckers and food for an unidentified fungus.

An orchid produces new life from one of its stems.

Today, as I was finishing up this post, a tiny spider let down a line of silk from the back of my computer and gently descended to my desk. Suppressing the culturally-conditioned instinct to crush it immediately, I gave it my complete attention. I marveled at the way it produced such a strong yet flexible substance from within its own body. I presented a piece of paper in front of the creature, upon which it climbed and explored slowly and carefully. It froze as I began moving the paper off the surface of the desk, and in the blink of an eye, jumped back to the surface of the desk, a leap that was many times its own body length. I thought of the strength that must have involved for its size and the movement of all its limbs in concord to effect a perfect landing. I wondered if it breathes during the jump or if it holds its breath just before taking off like I do. I picked the spider up from the desk once again and this time it remained on its perch until I stopped moving. It then descended slowly to the ground on another strand of silk, and I watched it search out a place of refuge. As it walked slowly away, I knew it was good, indeed, very good that spider exists, apart from any use to me, and I also knew that I am extremely blessed to be able to contemplate the wonder of life it is.

Photo credit: Lasiu7 from DeviantArt.com.

Rick Hederstrom
Associate Director

Jamaican Cherry - A Tribute

If you've stayed here at Kona Kai over the years, you have hopefully timed your visit to coincide with the harvest of at least one of our fruits from our tropical fruit garden. This is an important part of our ethnobotanical theme, as food is a major way people rely on plants for survival and well-being. Pretty much all food, meat included, ultimately comes from plants in some way or another (mineral seasonings like salt being a notable exception), and we would certainly be more than a little sad if we had nothing to eat. Interestingly, our diets here in America often only include perhaps only a percent or two of all edible species and varieties of edible plants available in the world. Our tropical fruit garden is a great place to introduce people to foods they've never tried before, which hopefully opens their eyes a bit more to the diversity of plants out there in the world (and even in their own grocery store). It sometimes takes people a bit out of their apples-oranges-bananas comfort zone to try a fruit new to them, but most everyone I've offered one to is glad they gave it a try.

Here we have pummelo (sliced and prepared), jaboticaba (dark purple), starfruit, and Jamaican cherry.

It's important to eat a variety of fruits and vegetables, not only for nutritional and preventative medicinal reasons, but also because if something is not used, it is usually much more easily lost. We currently have very little idea about what nutritional, medicinal, or other resources might lie in many of these less-than-well-known fruit trees, and if we only eat apples, bananas, and oranges, then guess what will be planted and offered for sale? If we as consumers choose and demand a greater variety of fruits and vegetables, then we can contribute to sustaining biodiversity instead of monoculture. Perhaps as a result, you'll one day see some of these less-well-known delectable tropical gems offered at your local grocer.

One of those gems, Jamaican cherry (Muntingia calabura), has been a fruit pretty much everyone has enthusiastically enjoyed because of its amazing cotton-candy-like flavor and simplicity of preparation (just pick and eat!). The tree sets fruit for much of the year, so I usually had at least one for each person on a tour with me, although the squirrels and birds sometimes got a bit too overzealous, forgetting to leave a few for us. I don't blame them, though, as the fruits certainly are delicious.

A ripe Jamaican cherry, which disappeared immediately after this photo was taken...

We have had very few issues with our much-loved Jamaican cherry tree besides having to cut back some of its vigorous branches, but back in May of 2012, it was found leaning against our shed after a particularly stormy night.

Luckily the shed was a close support!

Fortunately, we were able, with the help of Joe's truck, to pull the tree back to its former upright position and then tie it to a nearby California fan palm (Washingtonia filifera) as an anchor. It seemed to be doing very well, filling out its branches and producing copious amounts of fruit, until just over a year later, this past June, we found it leaning over again - this time in the opposite direction.

We took one look at the trunk and knew that the tree was nearing its end, with probably no more than a few months left to live. Its core appeared to be rotting away, and now the trunk had broken with its roots on two sides. Our tree's decline made sense to me, as the tree is what is known as an early-successional tree species in the wild, which means the tree is a quick grower, forming part of the first tree canopies in its native forests. To do this, early successional tree species will often sacrifice wood quality for quick growth. As soon as a disturbance makes a clearing in the forest, these trees begin their sprint. Grasses and shrubs usually have their "time in the sun" first, but the trees eventually displace them (depending on the habitat, of course). Their victory, however, will be short-lived as larger trees with more solid trunks, such as our native West Indies mahogany, are developing in the understory and eventually overtake the the early successional tree species like the Jamaican cherry. That's ok, though, because by this time, the Jamaican cherry tree has had plenty of seasons of flowering and fruit production with many creatures willing to disperse its seeds far and wide to await the next disturbance.

Despite being infected with rot and falling over, it was producing more fruit than we could eat, right up to the very end, giving until it could give no more.

The entire trunk was rotting out.

Our tree was planted in 1996, so 17 years is not that bad of a life for an early-successional tree, especially as it produced so much fruit in that time, seeming to take as credo the saying: "the important thing is not the years in your life, but the life in your years." As we know, the tree never actually got to taste any of its own delicious fruits, but after it met its own needs, used whatever else it had to produce these wonderful fruits for us, along with many of our resident birds and squirrels, to enjoy. Its life was then a source of life and enjoyment for many other creatures. For that, it will be remembered and greatly missed. Perhaps there is something here for us to learn from this tree. Our thoughts, words, and actions can be seen as our "fruits," which we produce and share with others. Which trees are the ones most enjoyed while alive, then missed and celebrated the most when they die? The ones that produce the greatest amounts of the most delicious fruit made available to enjoy. Less so are those trees that produce no enjoyable fruit. Least of all are those trees that produce putrid fruits. The same can be said for people - the sweeter and more abundant their "fruits," the more others enjoy being around them and will miss and celebrate their memory when they are gone. I hope that in this sense we may all be, in our own lives and our own ways, Jamaican cherry trees in the larger garden of the world.

Rick Hederstrom
Associate Director

P.S. In case you were wondering, we are hoping to replace the tree with another Jamaican cherry : )