The herbarium at the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology houses over 650,000 specimens, key for current and future botanical research. Biologist Daniel Gomez emphasizes the importance of registering plants to meet unknown future needs. While more is known about plants than other areas of nature, there are still immense unknowns. Many plant components remain undiscovered, highlighting a significant gap in understanding. Advancements in analytical chemistry are revealing new substances in plants, and observation of plants is often limited to visible parts, overlooking their hidden aspects.
We know much more about plants than nature in general, but like all other areas, there are so many more unknowns than knowns.
The 18th-century naturalists prior to Darwin never imagined that many years later, some of the plants they collected would be subject to genetic analysis.
Plants are a chemical arsenal. In fact, they are the source of many medicines we use.
In our observation of nature, we have a blind spot – we only notice what we can see, which is what sticks out of the ground.
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