editorial Loving the alien Plants are diferent and amazingly diverse. We should not be embarrassed to study them independently of their many uses.

t seems almost de rigueur these days countries worldwide. Hopefully, by the time have a multitude of shapes, often gracefully for grant proposals and publications to 18 May 2021 comes around, the events will balanced like an upside-down mobile by Iend with a promise that their research number over 1,000. Alexander Calder. To approach and study will translate into applications destined to Of course, understanding plants better will plants, one needs a fundamental change to make human life better in some way. Even lead to practical applications with potentially their point of view, a completely different as remote possibilities, these promises of world changing benefits, a fact not lost on frame of mind. societal benefit are so common as to have researchers — although a Review in this issue We should love plants for themselves, become worthless; conventional hooks to of Nature Plants discusses the challenges of for what their secret relationships can teach catch the attention of readers or funders. We actually delivering on such promises. But us about the multiplicity of ways to live will produce more food in less space; keep is it why we do research? Plants’ alterity is on our planet. We should be curious and yields high even in sub-optimal conditions; intellectually exciting and fascinating; their excited about them first, without thinking use our discoveries to produce more wood, fundamental otherness should be quite of what they can give us in return. The fibre, chemicals, drugs, energy and so enough to capture our curiosity. There is food and oxygen plants produce are utterly forth. This final mention of often tenuous no need to look for aliens in science fiction indispensable to us, but plants are a subject economic applications is so much the norm books, as they are already here around us; and of intellectual interest not just because they that we frequently only notice it on the rare while frequently not ‘little’, and never ‘men’, are useful, they command a deeper level of occasion that it is absent. they are green most of the time. appreciation. We do not love plants because This is not to deny that much research Plants are much older than humans, and they feed us; neither does reading a novel or in plant biology does have these direct or at followed a radically different evolutionary listening to music. Art and beauty are useless least plausible applications, but the constant path. They conquered land before in practical terms, and yet so necessary for repetition of the mantra of ‘practical vertebrates, and show immense diversity our wellbeing. applicability’ can make it seem that the main in shape, adaptation and way of life. For Recently there have been much goal, indeed the only goal, of plant sciences example, Arenaria bryophylla can live and discussions of ‘plant blindness’, a bias that is discovering ever more effective ways to reproduce at altitudes over 6,000 meters prevents human beings from noticing the force nature to give us what we want. As above sea level, an impossible feat for plants surrounding us; we evolved instead if plant biology was more concerned with humans. Mangrove trees grow in sea water. to focus on the immediate dangers posed by humanity than with the plants themselves. Cacti and other desert plants survive in crawling insects or big mammals. Perhaps Direct short-term agricultural extremely arid landscapes through various plant biologists can suffer from a different applications are of course a noble and ingenious adaptations. Other plants prefer kind of blindness, unable to see beyond important goal (and Norman Borlaug the semi-obscurity of cave entrances. In an obsessive focus on the practical utility is a rightly revered figurehead for such our cities (possibly the most hostile of of what we do, to the amazing beauty and agriculture-focussed plant sciences), but environments for non-humans), we have diversity of the plant world. fundamental research for the sake of pure all seen self-seeded adventurers, including Studying plants is a journey into a knowledge has its own merits, and should Arabidopsis thaliana, living and reproducing different world far from our animal-centric never be dismissed as an unprofitable in tiny cracks in the pavement, containing perspective. It helps us understand complex intellectual exercise. Curiosity and a certain maybe a teaspoon of organic matter at most. relationships that exist in nature, and it sense of wonder for a fascinating and Phytodiversity is not only geographical and prepares our minds for other convoluted extremely complex living world is probably environmental. The timescale of plant life is interaction networks, whether they are the real motivation for many researchers, different from ours and necessitates a mental biological, ecological, human or political. and the basis of their academic pursuits. adaptation. They move, mostly through Plant sciences teach us to accept the Is there anything more satisfying and growth, but very slowly, rarely detectable amazingly elaborate world in which we live, enlightening to understand how a flower by the human eye. Trees can live for many where a few universal physical rules and is made, how lateral roots grow, how a thousands of years whilst some seeds, at a shared genetic background created such symbiotic relationship between fungi and the first hint of rain, develop and reproduce a variety of living organisms on this small trees develop, what the use of trichomes is, in only a few weeks to give us magnificent, piece of rock floating through space. how rice became domesticated, how a plant sudden and ephemeral desert blooms. We must protect, love and study plants can perceive its neighbours? Plant development is radically different because they are magnificent and captivating This is exactly the motivation behind from that of animals. They grow new products of evolution. So, if only for a ‘Fascination of Plants Day’ organised under organs throughout their life and transform moment, forget about yields and embrace the umbrella of the European Plant Science themselves to satisfy their changing needs. plant science as a portal to a world of Organization, a currently biannual event on Not enough light? Just elongate to emerge fascination. ❐ 18 May. The celebration of all things ‘planty’ from the canopy. Not enough water or has grown considerably from its inception in nutrients? Grow more roots! An animal 2012. This year, the 5th Fascination of Plants ate my apex? Grow two more in its place. Published online: 10 June 2019 Day saw over 800 events take place in 51 Unlike boringly symmetrical animals, plants https://doi.org/10.1038/s41477-019-0463-3

Nature Plants | VOL 5 | JUNE 2019 | 551 | www.nature.com/natureplants 551