I have been posting wild flora photos on Steem for a good deal of time already.
Some of my Steem friends asked me why I do this, and I promised to write a post explaining and making all clear.
There are several reasons
First, I'm a convinced ecologist (not a fanatic one).
Secondly, I believe that humanity grew too far away from nature.
Thirdly, I am passionate about cooking and I like to experiment (if possible with plants and vegetables picked from my own garden or directly from the forest).
We value more the quantity and not the quality of what we eat
That's how we came to feed ourselves with only a few plants, birds and animal species.
Think about what a regular meal represents now and you'll have an overview.
We, the Romanians have been fortunate about it and that can be very well observed from the tastes we appreciate and we often long for.
That tomato from grandfather's garden awakens nostalgia. The taste of the chicken soup (raised in the yard) causes us real stomach revolutions ... And so on.
How many varieties of vegetables do you know? Did you ever ask? But breeds of hens or domestic animals?
How many people know how a penny bun or a chanterelle looks and tastes like?
Our children and grandchildren will get to believe that the milk comes from the supermarket bottle and the meat from the casserole.
Thank God I will not catch those times. I'm probably part of the last or, in the best case, one of the last generations that knows how to plant a tomato and how to butcher a hen or a pig.
Plants are food, medicines and raw materials
Worldwide, it is estimated that there are around 400,000 species of plants identified and more than 2000 species are found each year.
There are more than 30000 plant species that are used by humans for various purposes.
The use of medicinal plants is a real revival in our times. It's just that the herbs have come to be cultivated just like all the other plants that modern man uses.
Do you know how many of the modern drugs are based on the nature pharmacy? Over 70% of the world's medicines are based on substances discovered in nature and more than half of them are based on plants.
But how many of you have picked linden flowers, chamomile or mint?
On the other hand, because of intensive farming and the irrational exploitation of natural resources, 20% of the known plants are in danger of extinction (a Royal Botanic Gardens report says).
How many of these will disappear before being identified and tested as possible drugs or raw materials for the industry?
Why am I doing this?
For the simplest reason.
I think we have around us the cure for a multitude of diseases and a bunch of renewable raw materials for industry. We only must discover them before the plants in question will disappear forever.
And I think that a rational exploitation of resources would be extremely useful for humanity. We just need not to destroy everything in our race for industrialization and money.
I also want that my grandchildren and grandchildren's grandchildren to know what a morel, a salsify or a wild strawberry is.
For all the above mentioned, I’ve thought about starting a Steem project to help make wild plants known. Maybe it will not help too much but it certainly cannot hurt.
I invite everyone who reads this article to give a helping hand to this.
I will describe the project itself in the second part of this article, which I will publish in the coming days.
Steem on!