08/30/04

Impacts on Human Society:

Vascular seedless plants are often overlooked in their importance to human society.  Often times, these plants serve as merely decorative landscaping or erosion preventing flora in moist regions, taking advantage of the fact that vascular seedless plants thrive in moist shady areas.  The most important of uses for pterophytes include aesthetics, food, and medicinal value. 

In India, the species Azolla pinnata is used as rice fertilizer and feed for chickens.  Countless other species serve localized purposes such as cooking seasonings, water repellants, dye-production, as well as the production of mats, baskets, and packing materials.  In one special case, the species Equisetum arvense Linn. demonstrates an affinity for gold, reffered to by the locals as a "gold indicator."

Medicinally, there are a number of species that serve to cure nasal polyps, kidney infections, and even the common headache.  Numerous third world illnesses of the lungs and kidney are also cured by a species Lycopodium clavatum.  In third world nations, where modern medicine is largely out of reach, these tried and true practices of the past are proving that vascular seedless plants have many medicinal benefits that are just beginning to be discovered.  The ones mentioned are merely those documented to work at the present time, it is expected that hundreds more are yet to be confirmed.⁶