Plants, Society and the Environment

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

Plants have provided food, medicine, fuel, and raw materials for humans throughout our history. Concurrently, humans have modified the distribution, diversity and utility of plants for our benefit in ways that are often unsustainable. Many of the grand environmental and societal challenges of today and tomorrow involve our interactions with plants and the pivotal roles they play in our natural and modified environments. The goal of this course is to provide foundational knowledge about the biology and diversity of plants. This includes learning the basics of plant anatomy and physiology and the ecology and evolutionary history of plants. This knowledge is then utilized to discuss plants as sources of food, commercial products, medicines and toxins in the past, present and future of human society."