The living response

The plant in its world: macrocosm and microcosm

The environment of plants exists on vastly different scales. Plants are the primary producers and are basal to almost all food chains except marine ones where they are replaced by the algae, and a few others such as some deep-sea hydrothermal vents where chemoautotrophic organisms live. They play a vital role in the flow of energy through all ecological cycles. The whole system of life rests solidly on their industry without which the evolution of many other organisms could not have occurred. Vegetation forms the macrocosm of life on Earth, yet the relationships of individual plants to their environment operate on a microcosmic scale. Many of the adaptations of plants to life on land have involved internalising the external, creating their own atmosphere in the spaces between their cells in their leaves and stems or garnering moisture and nutrients by colonising the soil in the finest possible way.