Psychoactive Plants

Have you recreationally used psychoactive drugs this week? Chances are you have: common legal plant-derived psychoactive substances include caffeine and alcohol. Psychoactives (compounds that act on our central nervous system, especially the brain) are also found in prescription drugs like antidepressants, stimulants, mood stabilizers, sedatives, addiction treatments, and painkillers, many of whose ingredients have been sourced from plants.

Can we add an asterisk to "Just Say No"??? (Photo by Julius Schorzman)

Plants produce many psychoactive compounds that are / can be extremely useful to humans but there are many people who don't feel comfortable discussing their use. It seems like "psychoactive drug/substance" isn't perceived too widely in a positive light, but I think that's probably due to a lack of knowledge on the topic. If someone were to come up to me and ask, "Do you use any psychoactive drugs/substances?" it doesn't seem like "Yes" or "Absolutely!" would be an appropriate response. It seems like a potentially incriminating question, probably rooted in the anti-drug education I can remember from my elementary school years. When you're brought up with statements like "substance abuse," "Drugs are bad," "Dare to resist drugs," and "Just say 'No' to drugs," you are bound to see anything termed "drug" or "substance" in a negative light and have a knee-jerk reaction against it.

"Psychoactive" and its subcategory "psychedelic" also seem to be loaded terms with all sorts of negative connotations, which could have their genesis in some folks' negative attitude towards culture in the '60s and '70s, association of the terms with abuse or overdose, the fact that the word contains the pejorative "psycho," or knowledge of only addictive psychoactive substances or psychedelics that cause predominantly negative experiences. Our American culture has largely been bent on prevention or tight control of use of psychedelic substances, including Cannibis (aka marijuana), though its effects are quite mild. Marijuana is the most commonly use psychedelic in the world and also has a number of important material uses (usually under the name "hemp").

A good example of a marijuana smoker stereotype.

As we know from medicine, powerful plant compounds can be and have been used to treat serious diseases. In order for this to happen, the dosage is critical, and even a slight deviation from the recommended amount could have serious consequences. There is a risk:benefit correlation here, and the same is true for many psychoactive / psychedelic substances, which can be easily misused without proper education. First, one needs to understand the effects certain plants have, and also be able to correctly identify plants. There are certain plants that almost always produce horrifying experiences that someone would never want to repeat, let alone have in the first place (e.g. those caused by plants in the genera Atropa, Datura, and Brugmansia) but there are also plants that have usually positive and even indescribably amazing experiences (e.g. Ayahuasca) when properly prepared and in the right dosage (many have suffered harm when these conditions were not met). In my mind, some of the greatest knowledge held by indigenous peoples throughout the world relates to the preparation and use of psychoactive plants in the areas of therapy, spirituality, and appreciation of the natural world and the connections between all living things. Even though these people are often seen as poorer and less advanced than societies in developed countries, they possess riches and wisdom of which most people do not know or understand.

Mateo, a Matsigenka shaman (far left) prepares Ayahuasca with ethnobotanist Glenn Shepard (far right) in the Peruvian rainforest. (Photo by Manuel Lizarralde)

The plants are mixed together in a pot in the correct proportions and boiled for several hours. (Photo by Manuel Lizarralde)

Much of this wisdom has to do with powerful properties of plants, especially psychedelics. Even when properly prepared, a certain type of experience cannot be guaranteed for a particular plant or combination of plants. Major variables include the dosage, the internal constitution of a person (attitudes, fears, struggles, worldview), preparation for the experience, and the context of the experience, including the physical setting. That being said, there are often general effects that can be expected from certain plants and preparations, as described in the previous paragraph. Here is a link to a Wikipedia article that contains a couple good attempts to describe what can occur when humans use psychedelics. See especially the "Dynamics" and "Levels" sections: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_experience. I don't know how anyone would not be interested in the psychoactive / psychedelic properties of plants after reading through experience descriptions such as those.

"Encontro" by Alexandre Segregio depicting part of an Ayahuasca experience, which I chose because it was the best artistic representation I could find to reflect the Ayahuasca experience as a whole as I experienced it. Even though the body remains in the forest, the "spirit" travels beyond this world to other dimensions and what are also apparently other planets / galaxies / universes.

The sad part is that many people in our culture will only ever look to psychoactive plants for a recreational "high" and most people who have had experiences will have only experienced Levels 1 or perhaps 2 (e.g. marijuana). Fewer individuals would find or make use of the means to reach Levels 3 or 4 (e.g. mushrooms), still often an experience of only superficial entertainment. An incredibly profound Level 5 experience is safely accessible only with certain less-than-well-known tropical plants (e.g. those in Ayahuasca) with the correct preparation, with the right attitude and in the right context. If one is able to make those stars align, the experience is largely ineffable, as the Wikipedia article rightly states, and seems to transcend any other experience one has ever had.

Many psychedelic substances are illegal throughout the world because of the potential for abuse and the possibility of further experimentation leading to addicting drugs like cocaine or heroin (morphine). I think it is important, however, that we not "throw the baby out with the bath water," especially when it comes to Ayahuasca, which is an incomparable experience on its own but also has such great power to transform individuals' lives and alter their perception of the universe and the world in which we live in extremely profound ways. Cannibis is certainly another plant that warrants our consideration due to its many uses and potential uses beyond a recreational "high," and this is currently the hot topic of debate in the world of psychoactive plants. Perhaps it will open up a more widespread conversation and exploration into this most fascinating realm of ethnobotany in the near future.


Rick Hederstrom
Associate Director

2013-2014 Upper Keys Fairchild Challenge End-of-Year Awards Ceremony

It's hard to believe another school year has come and gone. We recently concluded The Botanic Gardens at Kona Kai Resort's 2013-2014 Upper Keys Fairchild Challenge with a bang at our end-of-year awards ceremony, which was a rewarding night for the 250+ students, teachers, and parents who crowded into Key Largo's Murray E. Nelson Center to receive their certificates, awards, and more. In all, over 900 students, 50 teachers, and 6 Upper Keys schools participated in the program this year!

We presented awards to students who participated in the winning submissions for each challenge, recognizing over 400 students in total, and also to the schools which earned the most points overall. Key Largo Elementary and Middle School were each awarded $750 to use toward future environmental programs for placing 1st in their divisions, while Plantation Key Elementary School and Treasure Village Montessori Middle School both received $500 awards for placing 2nd in their divisions. Additionally, 10 teachers were recognized as Environmental Role Models for their environmental dedication during the school year.

Highlights of the Awards Ceremony included two live performances. Dressed as native Keys creatures, the Key Largo Middle School Band opened the Ceremony with "Hangin' at the Hardwood Hammock." Later on, 3rd and 4th grade students from Ocean Studies Charter School treated the audience to a choral performance titled "You've God a Friend, Land & Sea."

We just started a YouTube channel, so now instead of having to pick and choose photos due to space considerations, we can just make a slideshow movie and show them all! Here's one that Joe made of this year's Upper Keys Fairchild Challenge Awards Ceremony:

If you'd like to learn more about the Upper Keys Fairchild Challenge program, visit www.kkbg.org, click on "Explore" and then "The Fairchild Challenge." Results, news, photos, and challenge details are available for each school year.

We're honored to be in a position as a botanic garden to play a part in educating the next generation of world citizens about the importance of plants and the environment to humans and the earth's future, and The Botanic Gardens at Kona Kai Resort is looking forward to once again facilitating The Fairchild Challenge in the Upper Keys for the 2014-2015 school year.


Rick Hederstrom, Associate Director
Joe Harris, Director

Three Years On

It's been just over three years since The Botanic Gardens at Kona Kai Resort officially opened. I can still remember receiving, in December of 2010, the impossible pre-opening "goals" from Joe (the Gardens' Director) after I made it through some of the first rounds of interviews for this position. It was a major reason I tried to withdraw my application; I knew there was no way I'd be able accomplish it all and thought, "the whole ethnobotanic garden thing is right up my alley, but this guy must be crazy thinking someone can do all that in three months!" Joe ended up reassuring me, however, that it was more of a "wish list" and that he understood some things would require a longer time scale. And so, after a very positive visit to Kona Kai for a final interview, I packed my car and headed down to the Keys.

The infamous pre-opening goal list - having worked in a Plant Records office for almost two years, I knew that I would be hard-pressed to finish the first two items alone in three months!

During the first year, Joe and I had many discussions about what we wanted the Gardens to focus on and the messages we wanted to convey. I brought what might be called an academic, technical, and practical "scientific" perspective, whereas Joe brought a more energetic, creative, and "layman's" perspective. It was interesting and frustrating conversing with Joe because he had none of the formal education in ethnobotany or experience regarding the inner workings of botanic gardens that I did, but this ended up being very helpful when it came to articulating what we wanted people to learn. Joe could provide insight into what someone without botanical knowledge would understand and find stimulating and powerful and what they probably wouldn't. The fruits of these discussions were our first batch of display labels and the first iteration of my "ethnobotanic" tour here at the Gardens, both of which focused primarily on the ways people have used and continue to use plants, which fall under the umbrellas of "traditional ethnobotany" and "economic botany." These vital practical uses of plants to humans were what originally struck Joe powerfully and made him want to share these many values of plants with others, hoping they would come to realize that we need to preserve and protect these valuable assets if we are to survive and thrive on earth for centuries to come.

The first display labels arrive!

As our discussions continued in subsequent months, our topics began to broaden. Joe now had a pretty good grasp on the many ways people use plants, but he still didn't know much about plants themselves. And so, he would often ask basic botanical questions like, "How does a plant survive?" I would explain that a plant uses photosynthesis to produce sugars and brings in water and nutrients through its roots. Then, of course, he would ask what photosynthesis is, which I would explain simply as the process of a plant using carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight to produce the sugars it uses to function and also oxygen as a byproduct. This elicited a response of wonder and astonishment from Joe, which was repeated again and again over the course of several weeks when discussing such self-evident and elementary subjects for a botanist. He explained to me that although many of these aspects of plants are well-known to me and have become by now "given knowledge," these things are potentially revelations to others who have had no botanical education, and suggested that I include many of these facts in my tour.

These particular bromeliads are not useful to humans from a "utilitarian" perspective, but they do contain fascinating micro-ecosystems within each plant, as well as clusters of tiny white flowers peeking just above the water that gathers in their centers.

One day, Joe came into the office and exclaimed, "Plants are people, too!" "Oh boy..." I thought. Joe continued, "They need to eat, they need to drink, they breathe, they see light, and some plants even move when you touch them!" "Sure," I said, "but that doesn't make them people... maybe like people, but they are not humans." Although he initially showed some resistance to this distinction, especially after reading books like The Secret Life Of Plants and Plants as Persons, we eventually reached an understanding after a number of subsequent discussions and reading of other, more scientific, literature such as What A Plant Knows by Daniel Chamovitz. Although Joe eventually came to agree that plants are indeed not people, we both found compelling value in the perspective of perceiving plants as much more than objects; as "persons" in their own way.

Descriptions of each of these books can be found in the "Recommended Reading" section of kkbg.org.

Well into our second year, we were able to see that the focus of the Gardens and my tours, while still based on plants and people, had expanded significantly beyond the realm of "traditional" ethnobotany and into areas like plant biology, plant behavior, and philosophical botany. If it had been just me running the Gardens, it probably would have remained focused on traditional ethnobotany and would have had a more scientific orientation. If it had been just Joe, if I may take the liberty of humorous speculation, the Gardens would have likely been a place where a man apparently out of his mind pets his plants, carries on in-depth one-sided conversations with them, and makes sure they are dressed properly with pants, shirts, and sunglasses. As it happened, though, we came together to form a very unusual collaboration, much like two different species of plants that hybridize to create a new plant that retains the best qualities of each.

Pluots (plum x apricot) - one of my favorite hybrids, YUM!

The product of this hybridization has been the development of the Gardens' current mission to transform people's understanding of plants through educational and restorative experiences here at The Botanic Gardens at Kona Kai Resort, and vision of a world in which people partner with plants to preserve and protect our biosphere. We go about accomplishing this through 90-minute TYUP (Transforming Your Understanding of Plants) Tours here at the Gardens, as well as an education program for local students (we currently facilitate the involvement of over half of all elementary and middle school Upper Keys students in The Fairchild Challenge environmental education program). KKBG.org is our virtual botanic garden "app" that allows visitors to explore the Gardens in an interactive way, take the Gardens home with them, and share it with others. Although we're a small botanic garden, we're "planting" and "watering" hundreds of seeds of environmental awareness every year in the lives of those who visit us or take part in one of our programs. We strongly believe that the 21st Century is a pivotal time in human history, a time for many of these seeds to germinate to spark widespread partnership with plants to preserve and protect our biosphere for generations to come.

For more on our focus of "Plants as Partners," see Joe's most recent Director's Letter.


Rick Hederstrom
Associate Director

Nothing Gold Can Stay

"Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So Eden sank to grief,

So dawn goes down to day.

Nothing gold can stay."

I often think of this poem by Robert Frost when walking around the Gardens. Everywhere there is life and beauty because the Gardens are very well kept by our staff. It is interesting to note that for a garden to be "well kept" it is almost a requirement that what is decaying or dead be removed or at least hidden. And yet, even in the best-kept gardens, there is no lack of death and decay, and cracks can be found in the facade of beauty if only one looks for them, which not many care to do. Why is it that our culture's sense of aesthetics largely excludes death and decay from what is considered "beautiful"? Perhaps it's because these sights serve as uncomfortable reminders that "nothing gold can stay."

Although I do love landscapes and gardens filled with only blooms and life, it seems like something of a lie: death doesn't really exist - the world is perpetually in a state of youthful beauty and vigor. When we look at a flower in full bloom, we are enraptured by it and our spirits soar, and may even be filled with a deep longing. Perhaps there is an unconscious reason why we love to surround ourselves with flowers in bloom - that we might convince ourselves that our life will also be only bloom, with no decay or death; that these things don't really exist.

Yet these very flowers serve as one of the most poignant examples of the transitoriness of every living thing on earth precisely because their extreme beauty gives way to almost unthinkable ugliness in such a short span of time. We would, of course, love to believe that flowers only go from bud to bloom and then bloom in perpetuity. Notice how flower bouquets are usually discarded as soon as the decay begins; we don't want to see that. I doubt most people have ever even intently looked upon a flower that has fully died!

For those who are willing to look these phenomena of decay and death straight in the eye, the hibiscus provides great opportunities for reflection. One can watch the buds develop as their beautiful colors flush into the exposed petals, which then open into full bloom for only a single glorious day. Afterwards, the flowers quickly and quietly fade and do not remain long on the plant, falling off to make way for tomorrow's beauties, which easily make you forget about the ones that came before - you will not bother looking for them underneath the leaves, where they are decaying upon the ground; a forgotten, contorted shadow of yesterday's magnificent beauty. Here is a sequence of photographs chronicling the typical life of a hibiscus flower over the course of about a week:

But if we do decide to push back the leaves of the hibiscus bushes to find the unsightly figures of yesterday's beauty, undoubtedly we will feel a corresponding tinge of revulsion perceptible within ourselves, as if our mind can't stand to face the truth of what such beauty has become, and what we ourselves will one day soon become. Indeed, each of our physical bodies is a flower. Look in the media today - youth is glorified in the same way flowers are glorified in display gardens. But what happens to those youthful "flowers" once they've passed their prime? Our culture seems to do the same as a display gardener would - keep them away from sight so as not to upset our pleasant fantasy of being forever young and beautiful. We can, however, find these flowers of yesterday if we but seek them out, beyond the movie screens and magazines. Here are only a couple examples among countless others:

Arnold Schwarzenegger, 4-time Mr. Universe and 7-time Mr. Olympia.

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Ursula Andress, the original Bond girl in the first James Bond Movie - Dr. No.

Flowers teach us the way of natural physical life on earth - youth, beauty, and vigor give way to decay, ugliness, and death. Try as we might, we will all reach the same end; we will all "subside" like the flowers of spring or the leaves of autumn, as Frost observes. And yet, we find a strange principle within the human species that seems to suggest an exception to Frost's "golden" rule. While our bodies follow the same path as nature's flowers, the spirit that animates our bodies can actually become more beautiful with age until the day we die. What then is this that has the potential to proceed ever forward mockingly in the face of inevitable physical decay and death? Simply, it is love, and all the noble qualities contained therein. If we are fortunate enough, we may arrive to the point of death enlivened by this triumph of love, when our spirit can say with Paul of Tarsus "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?"

After our bodies die, what happens to the spirits that animate them cannot be proven for certain one way or another, but perhaps well-kept gardens full of life, vigor, and beautiful flowers are not, as postulated above, intuitively created and appreciated so much out of an unconscious attempt to remove anything hinting of our inevitable decay and death. Perhaps they come from the sprouting of a deeply-seeded knowledge and hope inside that decay and death are not meant to be our end, but rather a passage into a perpetual springtime, of which our well-kept gardens and our capacity for ever-growing love within ourselves in spite of physical decay are only signs.


Rick Hederstrom
Associate Director

So Much To Do, So Little Time

I'm pretty sure everyone has made or heard this lament several times in their life, if not every day. Most of us have more things we want to do than we have the time and/or resources for, both in our personal lives and at work, and this is certainly the case at The Botanic Gardens at Kona Kai Resort.

Think of all the things we currently do and could yet do with this botanic garden. We want to answer all the e-mails we receive the same day we get them. I need to inventory our collections regularly and take notes on flowering and fruiting events, entering all this into our botanic garden database. Plant labels need to be made and maintained. I research new plants to add to our collections then need to make time to head up to Homestead to bring back the new specimens. We take photographs for our own records and also for social media - and then we need to manage all those social media accounts. We would love to acquire more plots of land to expand our collections. I would love to be able to offer ten different tours instead of two. I already have a 90-minute tour slot each day, but demand could certainly increase to requiring two per day. It would be great to put out a blog every week instead of once every two or three. We're working on a botanic art gallery and it would be very neat to feature interactive exhibits along with those works of art. It would be of great benefit to the community if we could bring our educational environmental programs for students to all the schools here in the Keys, not just elementary and middle school students in the Upper Keys. We would love it if our Grounds Director could spend all her time focused only on caring for the collections, but as it is, about half her time is needed for other work on the property. KKBG.ORG has come into its own as a virtual ethnobotanic garden, but I would love to to make it an even more comprehensive ethnobotanical resource. It would be valuable for us to attend more community events, devote more time to fundraising, and write at least a few grant proposals each month. It sure would be neat to host seminars and workshops on ethnobotany here with experts from around the U.S. and the world, as well as a range of other special events. It would be nice to eat lunch each day as well. And on and on and on...

Just a few of the things we do.

Now think of how much an organization with one full time staff member and three part time staff members could handle well without becoming overwhelmed. At least one part-time person is needed for daily horticultural maintenance and another part-time person is required for a basic level of administration, and all of a sudden we're already down to one full time and one part time person! Needless to say, we can't do all we would like to do. In reality, though, no organization does, even if they have 100 times the staff and resources. There will always be something more that could be done, and more is never enough.

Deciding what to focus our time on given our limitations and figuring out how to go about accomplishing those things has been a challenge for me in my role as Associate Director here at the Gardens, but one I quite enjoy because I feel it's a skill that is extremely important to develop for use in all aspects of life. So how exactly does one go about making these choices about what to do given constraints on time and resources? When it comes to the Gardens, Joe and I get together a couple times a year to comprehensively evaluate what we are doing and what we might want to do. Our mission and vision statements are crucial to this process because they allow us an objective framework from which to evaluate whether or not programs are relevant to what we want to achieve as a Garden and which relevant programs are most important. Choices on my own then need to be made regarding how to go about accomplishing these goals. With practice and an internalization of the priorities of the organization as well as consideration for deadlines, I begin to make these choices almost unconsciously. Beyond that, personal preference is important, as some people prefer to start the day with the most challenging tasks so they can coast downhill after that, whereas others prefer to start off with easier-to-accomplish tasks to get into a groove before going after the more time-consuming and challenging tasks.

To make things a little more complicated, each week is usually full of unanticipated interruptions and tasks. I've found that one of the most valuable skills to develop is a flexibility from hour-to-hour and day-to-day that allows me to maintain a sort of disjointed continuity: taking on unanticipated tasks as they arise while at the same time staying focused on the several projects of central importance that need to get done, so that when I'm able to get back to the last major project I was working on, I can pick up easily where I left off. I imagine the ideal of this skill metaphorically as a constant juggling act of tennis balls (representing major mission-oriented goals to accomplish) that incorporates other tennis balls (representing smaller unanticipated tasks) into the juggling routine whenever they come up. The tennis balls are then dropped out as they are "accomplished," all while maintaining flawless juggling of the others. When you get it right, this is basically what it feels like:

Certainly, people have juggled several more balls at one time than that, but not in such an incredibly artistic and powerful way. So, even if we can afford to have only a few tennis balls in the air at a time as a botanic garden given the staff and resources we have, we can still create an unforgettable experience for our visitors and local community. It's not how much you have, but what you do with what you've got.


Rick Hederstrom
Associate Director

Why Classify Plants?

In the last post, we discussed the classification of life and how it's not as simple as it seems. Since it's so difficult and confusing, why bother classifying life at all? I hope to explore in this post some of the reasons why, specifically related to plants.

First, classification is an integral part of an organized and practical naming system, which Linnaeus recognized; he closely linked classification and naming. The official names for creatures prior to his work served two functions: to identify and describe. The names were in Latin (the universal "educated" language) and could be two or more words long. The first word was the generic name for the creature and the rest of the words formed a specific description. Sounds like a pretty good idea, but since you had no limit on the number of words in the specific description, you ended up with names like: Plantago foliis ovato-lanceolatus pubescentibus, spica cylindrica, scapo tereti. Understandably, Linnaeus recognized things were getting out of hand and that no one would be able to remember these ridiculously long names. He decided that each name should still be two parts, generic and specific, but that the specific name should be limited to only one word, while the lengthier descriptions should be listed elsewhere. And so, the lengthy Latin name listed above became Plantago media. Much better. This "binomial" (two name) system of naming is still used today, and we still use Latin since it is the classical universal scientific language; each Latin name is held in common around the world, so scientists in different countries can be on the same page when it comes to names and descriptions of life forms, which would otherwise be impossible because of language differences.

Plantago media (Photo credit: Sten Porse via Wikimedia Commons)

This binomial naming system inherently incorporates classification. Plants of the same species are able to reproduce with one another "naturally" (i.e. no human intervention) in the wild and produce viable offspring (seeds that will grow). Plants with the same generic name (aka "genus") are closely related, sharing many characteristics, but they do not reproduce with one another naturally in the wild. The next broader stage of relationship is at the "family" level, which usually includes a number of different related genera (plural of "genus") that share even broader characteristics. So, a plant not only has a name as an identity; its name is an indicator of relationships with the thousands of other plants and organisms in the web of life.

A simplified taxonomic family tree I drew to show how relationship and naming go hand in hand.

These relationships are important to know because plants that are related share similar characteristics. This one fact has a number of very useful practical implications like finding sources for medicinal compounds. If you found an especially effective medicinal compound in a rare plant, you would want to see if other more common species with this same compound exist to serve as sources for the medicine until a synthetic method for production is developed (which can take many years). It is often the case that closely related plants will produce similar compounds, so classification comes in handy here. A good example of this situation is Taxol, a powerful anticancer drug. The active compound in this drug, paclitaxel, was discovered in the bark of the Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia), which was harvested from wild trees to produce the drug from 1967 to 1993, thereby killing each tree used for this purpose.  Since the tree itself did not have a large range, the cancer-fighting drug was not widely available and the Pacific yew's future was in danger. So, scientists began to look elsewhere and discovered that the compound was also found in other species of yew trees and that needles from a common cultivated species (Taxus baccata) could be harvested and used in a semi-synthetic method of drug production, which made the medicine much more widely available and saved the Pacific yew from being harvested to extinction. Hooray for taxonomy!

A branch of Taxus brevifolia, the Pacific Yew (Photo credit: Jason Hollinger via Wikimedia Commons)

Harvesting the bark for Taxol. (Photo credit: NCI via Wikimedia Commons)

The finished product. (photo credit: drugdiscovery.com)

Another example regards avoiding poisonous plants. If you grew up with poison ivy (Toxicodendron radicans) in the north and know it is in the family Anicardiaceae, you could save yourself a lot of miserable itching by knowing which other plants are in the same family, like poisonwood (Metopium toxiferum) here in the Keys. Another plant family to learn to identify and avoid is Urticaceae, which contains many species of plants with stinging hairs. Lest you think "stinging hairs" don't sound so bad, check out the following video, which might motivate you to learn a little botany before your next trip through the woods:

Click here to watch the video on YouTube if the one above does not load.

Classification also helps with conservation efforts, as it gives us an inventory of the world's plant species and tells us how related they are to one another. This information can, for example, help us prioritize which plants to conserve. While no species should be treated as expendable, classification comes in handy if we have to choose between spending our resources to preserve, say, one of the 1,200 species of orchids in the genus Dendrobium or the species Ginkgo biloba, which is not only the only species in the genus Ginkgo, it is the only genus in the family Ginkgoaceae (compared to 880 genera of orchids in the orchid family, Orchidaceae), and is even alone in its own DIVISION (to put that into perspective, another example of a plant division is "flowering plants," which includes about 250,000 species); in short, there is nothing else like it on earth. Conservation efforts don't have unlimited funds, so if we have a good classification of plants, we can try and conserve the most diversity with the limited resources available for these efforts.

A nice specimen of Ginkgo biloba. Photo credit (from Wikimedia Commons)

The very distinctive leaves of Ginkgo biloba. (Photo credit: James Field via Wikimedia Commons)

Classification also helps when it comes to developing desired traits in plants such as higher fruit yield, disease resistance, or stress tolerance through breeding. While different species in the same genus do not reproduce naturally in the wild due to a number of factors, they will often produce viable seed if pollen from one is introduced to another by a human. To make a hybrid, you would find out which plants are closely related, then select from that group the species that have the qualities you want for breeding. For instance, if you wanted an especially tasty and disease-tolerant citrus tree, you would try to find a species of citrus with great fruit yield / taste and a related species of citrus noted for its disease resistance. Thanks to classification efforts, you can find a list of all the known citrus species in the world, and from there, you can find out which ones are tastiest and which ones have the least disease problems, then try and make some magic happen. This process has recently become very important for Florida farmers with the spread of citrus canker and citrus greening disease; hybridizations are made to produce trees with the best disease resistance and fruit quality.

Not exactly what you want to see on the grocery store shelves.

I hope this post has given you a better idea about some of the practical uses and benefits of plant classification in areas like drug discovery and development, food security, conservation, and the avoidance of painful and/or poisonous plants, which I hope will motivate you to take a closer look at those curious Latin names on our plant labels during your next visit!


Rick Hederstrom
Associate Director

Classifying Life

Humans, by nature, seem to like order: distinct entities with names that fit neatly together in relationships that make sense, like in filing cabinets and family trees. It makes sense that if humans classify everything in their own lives, they would want to do something similar with the life that surrounds them. We are a "botanic garden" and that very name involves a classification of life ("plants"). When you explore a botanic garden, you find that initial classification broken down further into more specific groups (family, genus, species) that are often indicated on display labels in front of individual plants. So how did this classification come about and how exactly does one go about classifying life, starting at the most general level?

I suspect if we were asked to organize and classify living creatures, most of us would do what was done prior to the 18th century: divide all life up first into "vegetative life" and "animal life" based on mobility and how organisms look overall. Vegetative life would include creatures like plants, algae, and fungi, while animal life would include mammals, humans, birds, fish, reptiles, insects, etc.

So where do we put this guy?  #classificationconundrums (Seriously, this is real: photo from keralitesblog.blogspot.ro)

This first division of life into Vegetative and Animal was used by Carl Linnaeus in the early 1700s when he set out to create a comprehensive classification and naming system for life on earth. One might say the classification of life first became a science at this time. He developed a hierarchical system for classification in which Vegetative and Animal were "kingdoms" with subcategories that started out general and became more and more specific (i.e. phylum, class, order, family, genus, species). His system was based mostly on reproductive characteristics, which were more reliable and accurate than using overall physical appearance and mobility as main considerations.

Carl Linnaeus' landmark work on the classification of life, Systema Naturae.

Linnaeus did a lot for the science of classification (known as "taxonomy"), but a huge amount of life, which for the most part cannot be seen with the naked eye, went unclassified in his work, even though Antonie van Leeuwenhoek discovered microorganisms in the mid- to late-1600s with the help of the advanced (at the time) microscopes he developed. Finally in 1866, a man named Ernst Haeckel took these creatures into consideration by classifying life first into three kingdoms as either Plants, Animals, or Protists (single-celled organisms and simple multicellular organisms that did not seem to fit well as either a Plant or an Animal). This was another step in the right direction, but there was still much to learn about these tiniest of life forms, which were to make a disproportionately large splash in taxonomy.

Amoebas are single-celled organisms that wound up classified as protists...you can understand the dilemma of trying to decide how to classify this sort of creature.

In the 1800s, taxonomists began to arrange life into "family trees" to reflect relationships, based on the view that all life shares a single ancestor and differentiated over time into separate species, which was not really something considered prior to 1859, when Darwin's "Origin of Species" was published.

Here's an early "tree of life" done by Haeckel. Note the three main divisions of life.

When creating these "trees," the first division of life reflected the earliest presumed differentiations, which were usually determined to be the most fundamental differences. As we mentioned earlier, the most fundamental differences in life were thought to be between plants and animals (and later, protists), but in the late 20th century, classification systems experienced dramatic restructuring based on cellular and genetic analysis of life, which was previously impossible due to technological limitations. Scientists began realizing that the differences between plants and animals were much less fundamental than originally thought, relative to other life forms on earth. Plants and animals are actually quite similar on the fundamental levels of cell makeup and genetic structure / coding:

Taxonomists today think that the difference between life with cells having DNA in a nucleus and membrane-bound organelles (specialized structures found in cells of plants, animals, and fungi) and life with free-floating DNA and no membrane-bound organelles are the most fundamental meaningful differences in life, also thought to have occurred very far back in time. We call these two forms of life prokaryotic life and eukaryotic life. Because of this, notable taxonomists like Carl Woese now think that the first division of life should be made into domains like Bacteria, Archaea, and Eukarya, which would be a level above kingdoms (plants, animals, protists, fungi, etc.), which were previously considered to be the most general classifications of life.

A diagram of Woese's three-domain classification, showing how plants, animals, and fungi are actually "close relatives" when compared to some of the other life found on earth, most of which is not readily visible.

Bacteria and Archaea do not reproduce sexually and are both single-celled prokaryotes, but they have enough significant differences in very fundamental areas (membrane structure and genetic structure, makeup, and coding) to warrant splitting into two domains. Prokaryotic life is believed to have begun on earth from 3.5 to 2.7 billion years ago, developing in the earth's early inhospitable conditions. Since the conditions of early earth are hypothesized to have been quite extreme, it is likely that organisms much like today's Archaea, which live in extreme environments such as underwater hydrothermal vents, oil deposits, and volcanic hot springs, were first to exist. Bacteria are also ancient; Cyanobacteria are the first life forms we have evidence for in the fossil record. It is the only prokaryote that uses photosynthesis to produce food and it forms the basis of most of the aquatic food chain along with algae. While it is generally agreed that prokaryotic life was the first life on earth, it is not certain if Bacteria or Archaea came first.

Archaea form the basis of deep sea hydrothermal vents, using the chemical compounds from the vents for energy.

Cyanobacteria can also tolerate some extreme conditions; they are responsible for the psychedelic colors (except the blue) of the Grand Prismatic Spring in Yellowstone National Park.

Eukaryotes appeared 2.1 to 1.6 billion years ago and may have developed when certain prokaryotic cells were "eaten" by others and rather than being digested, were put to use by the cell. These became the membrane-bound organelles like chloroplasts and mitochondria found in eukaryotic cells. Somewhere along the line, single-celled eukaryotes began to work together as groups to make multicellular organisms, eventually becoming many of the easily visible organisms we are most familiar with. It's amazing to think that "I" am actually trillions of specialized cells working together. It's not until we progress very far up the "tree of life" that we encounter humans, who are out on the tip of a far branch as relative newcomers to the planet and only a single species among thousands. Here's a beautiful diagram called the Hillis Plot, which is basically a modern "tree of life" in circle form, with humanity's position indicated in the upper-left-hand corner:

It's incredible to think that only a single species among so many thousands has had such a disproportionate impact on the planet...

...and in such a small span of time: in the "hour" of the earth's existence, humans have been around for 0.1 seconds.

I hope you've gained an appreciation of just how difficult it is to classify life, and we've only been considering the most general categories, which should be the easiest! Now just imagine making the thousands of further distinctions and categorizations in the "tree of life" on the levels of phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species that you see in the Hillis Plot... I can assure you it doesn't get easier. Classification and naming of life is certainly not cut and dry, and as much as we humans dislike disorder and chaos, life seems to resist the organized classification we would like to make for it. All that I've brought up in this post is really only the tip of the iceberg and there's good reason to believe the classification of life we currently have will look quite different a hundred years from now. Indeed, taxonomists are starting to transition from the idea of life and its history as a "tree," seeing it now more as a chronological "web" for reasons such as horizontal gene transfer.

Who knew life could be so complicated and that those two apparently innocuous questions posed in the first paragraph would require such an explanation... Go grab some ice for your brain, as I'm sure it's pretty sore after reading this post!

Sometime later, after you've recovered, I hope to discuss the classification of plants in particular and why it's so important, now that we've seen where they fit into the larger framework of natural life.


Rick Hederstrom (domain: Eukarya, kingdom: Animalia, phylum: Chordata, class: Mammalia, order: Primates, family: Hominidae, genus: Homo, species: sapiens)
Associate Director