In Awe of Flora

Flora, in this case, is not the Spanish lady's first name.  It is flora as in :

"flo·ra 1. (Botany) all the plant life of a given place or time 2. (Botany) a descriptive list of such plants, often including a key for identification .."

We, elephants, whales, minnows, polar bears, coyotes, earthworms, fleas and termites and every life form in between - all air-breathing animals - belong to half of a pair that defines the two general classifications of living organisms on this planet: flora and fauna. This follows my last musing, "CO2", and this is one of the ways to pay homage to all plant life. Without them as co-dependent, life would be unsustainable for every air breathing organism.   

But..

 "Which was here first: plants or animals?"

Quick answer is: Plants preceded animals by 60 million years !!

The long answer: For three billion years our world was populated by nothing more than single-celled life forms.  It was only half a billion years ago that multicellular organisms came into being. Then about 450 millions before us, arthropods - animals with segmented body parts similar to what insects and simple crustaceans have - dominated the landscape. But in a flash, by geological standards, they became extinct.

After that mass extinction that killed off the arthropods, "Modern" era plants, vegetation permeated the entire earth.  It was 60 million years later when tetrapods -  aquatic dwelling four-limbed creatures that breathe air either through gills or rudimentary lungs - came into being. 

From that point on, the beauty and wonders of creation unfolded to fulfil the inevitability and resiliency of life in all its diversity and every species' unwavering determination to survive, adapt and evolve. Whatever is the reader's inclination: a belief in the mystery and existence of a higher power that is the Creator or to not believe at all or straddle the fence of agnosticism, one must, however, acknowledge that for one of these organisms to rise above all the others and develop the intelligence to ponder these things, one must be in awe that however long it took, the wonders of creation are all around us, yet only we are equipped to understand it.  Not completely, of course, but at least we have the ability to peel one layer at a time the nature of our world that predates us by billions of years. 

And plants not only pre-dated us and all the other air breathing creatures, they prepared the landscape to be habitable and conducive to an almost never ending processes of evolution that to this day continues.  In addition to that, plants continue to convert the sun's energy into packets of nutrients for all the other organisms.  Indirectly, plants allow us to use the sun's energy to sustain us.  Here's how:

By now, readers of my musings will have long known my defense of what seems an almost indefensible stance - standing up for the most maligned compound on this planet - carbon dioxide and its single element that is carbon. I have my own good reasons. Carbon dioxide is what sustains plants.  Plants sustain us.  The inevitable cycle that connects flora and fauna had gone on for eons.  

There is an extremely high probability that one of the oxygen atoms that was  in about 400 milliliters of air you inhaled from the one breath you took just now was the same one that was in a gulp of air that T-Rex or some ancient bird took millions of years ago. It could also have been one of two oxygen atoms that was in CO2 absorbed by some Jurassic fern or algae, recycled many trillions of times over and over up to the moment it entered your lungs a moment ago. And then only to be part of a waste-compound that is CO2, once again, which you are about to expel through your nostrils or mouth. Then it starts all over again and again, ad infinitum.  Even while at rest - sitting down reading this - your respiratory system processed 360 liters of air in one hour.  After one 24-hour day, you expelled 2 pounds of carbon dioxide.

Yes, every breath you take is recycled material. Actually, we are from recycled material. Every species that ever lived and each of its descendants into the future will continue to be made up of recycled material. 

Genesis 3:19

"By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

In fact, the iron in your blood, the calcium in your bones go way back long before the solar system was created.

Here is something to think about.

Going by the Biblical accounts of the first chapter in the Book of Genesis are a narration of the sequence of creation that practically mirrors the order of development defined in cosmology, geology and biology supported by fossil records and other observations. 

Biblical symbolisms and allegories aside, a careful look into the sequence of creation will point to an uncanny similarity with the order of fossil evidence. Plants were created on the third day, air breathing creatures on the fifth day, while humans - represented by Adam and Eve - did not come about until the sixth day.  

11 Then God said, “Let the land produce vegetation: seed-bearing plants and trees on the land that bear fruit with seed in it, according to their various kinds.” And it was so. 

12 The land produced vegetation: plants bearing seed according to their kinds and trees bearing fruit with seed in it according to their kinds. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening, and there was morning—the third day.

20 And God said, “Let the water teem with living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the vault of the sky.”  

21 So God created the great creatures of the sea and every living thing with which the water teems and that moves about in it, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind.

 

23 And there was evening, and there was morning—the fifth day.

26 Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals,[a] and over all the creatures that move along the ground.”

29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food.

If there can ever be one thing that both believers in the Biblical account and those who only rely on scientific evidence can agree on is that plants came first.  They can also agree on the supposition that perhaps plants came first to prepare the environment for airbreathing organisms to emerge, to survive and to flourish.

Both sides can also agree that life as we know it today is forever linked to the seemingly convenient arrangement for both flora and fauna to not only  coexist but to be co-dependents with each other

We must therefore be in awe of flora.

We must be in awe of the powers of the Creator and the wonders of creation.