During the Covid pandemic, sciences such as virology and epidemiology often had a difficult time - the need to combat an acute crisis, coupled with great uncertainty about the scientific findings on which this fight had to be based, created profound doubts in many people about the established scientific community.
On the other hand, the pandemic also led to an enormous boom in "citizen science", research projects, especially in astronomy, zoology and botany, which are carried out with the help or entirely of a large number of lay people.
Botanical gardens also reported record visitor numbers in 2021 - another sign that many people are using the time to turn to "nature".
Hansjörg Küster's latest book offers a good opportunity to scientifically underpin such an interest in plants.
Plants tend to sit at the bottom of hierarchical systems, and people are often more interested in animals than plants—in the United States, 57 percent of the nation's endangered species are plants, yet only 4 percent of endangered species conservation funds go to plants .
This does not do justice to the global importance of plants: The biosphere contains around 550 gigatonnes of carbon stored in the biomass – 450 gigatonnes of which are bound in plants.
The aimlessness of evolution
Küster starts from the simple but immensely consequential observation that plants and their growth are the driving force for all life on earth - without plants there would be no animals and no people.
In nineteen chapters he traces the evolution of plants in the history of the earth, from the appearance of the first cells to the conquest of the land, and then describes the morphological building blocks of land plants with roots, shoots and leaves.
Finally, chapters on flowers, pollen, seeds and fruits deal with reproduction, and the book ends with reflections on cultivated plants, vegetation zones, the dynamics of vegetation development under the influence of humans and climate, and sustainability.
Küster repeatedly emphasizes the aimlessness of evolution and the dynamics of natural processes, and he points out that there never was and never will be stability in vegetation.
Sustainability relies on recognizing these dynamics and ensuring that there is always enough organic matter retained in plants to keep the temperature rise in the atmosphere manageable.
Küsters book emerged from a university lecture series.
It is clearly structured didactically and thematically and is easy to understand, but requires a basic familiarity with scientific terminology.
Of course, a book of this size can only briefly touch on most topics, so a more extensive list of further reading to deepen the topics covered would have been desirable.
However, Küster succeeds in getting people interested in botany and seeing the surroundings through different eyes.
One of the most important future sciences
Basic botanical knowledge also promotes a different view of world history and contemporary politics – the domestication and propagation of plants make them cultural and technological artifacts, and crops such as wheat, rice and corn have been closely intertwined with human history for thousands of years.
The war in Ukraine also shows the vulnerability of the global food system, which is extremely dependent on these three species - wheat, rice, corn.
Improving the robustness of this system to perturbations will also depend on diversification of the plant diet.
It is estimated that approximately seven thousand species of plants are edible;
this potential must be researched and used more intensively.
In addition, neglected crops, especially in the tropics, need more attention from breeders and plant geneticists.
Botany is undoubtedly one of the most important future sciences, and Hansjörg Küster is its effective advocate.
Hansjörg Küster: "Flora". The whole kingdom of plants.
CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2022. 224 p., ill., hardcover, €22.