单项选择题
| Botany, the study of plants, occupies a
peculiar position in the history of human knowledge. For many thousands of years
it was the one field of awareness about which humans had anything more than the
vaguest of insight. It is impossible to know today just what our Stone Age
ancestors knew about plants, but from what we can observe of preindustrial
societies that still exist, a detailed learning of plants and their properties
must be extremely ancient. This is logical. Plants are the basis of the food
pyramid for all living things, even for other plants. The have always been
enormously important to the welfare of people, not only for food, but also for
clothing, weapons, tools, dyes, medicines, shelter, and a great many other
purposes. Tribes living today in the jungles of the Amazon recognized literally
hundreds of plants and know many properties of each. To them botany, as such,
has no name and is probably not even recongnized as a special branch of
knowledge at all. Unfortunately, the more industrialized we become the farther away we move from direct contact with plants, and the less distinct our knowledge of botany grows. Yet everyone comes unconsciously on an amazing amount of botanical knowledge, and few people will fail to recognize a rose, an apple, or an orchid. When our Neolithic ancestors, living in the Middle East about 10,000 years ago, discovered that certain grasses could be harvested and their seeds planted for richer yields the next season, the first great step in a new association of plants and humans was taken. Grains were discovered and from the flowed the marvel of agriculture-. cultivated crops. From then on, humans would increasingly take their living from the controlled production of a few plants, rather than getting a little here and a little there from many varieties that grew wild—and the accumulated knowledge of tens of thousands of years of experience and intimacy with plants in the wild would begin fade away. |