'It turns out that coconut charcoal is the best substance on Earth for nullifying astronauts breaking wind': The secret uses of plants
From ice cream to underwear and explosives, plants are remarkably integral to much of the manmade world, a new book shows.
In Ancient China, rice was not only eaten, but also mixed with sand, water and limestone. ‘The stickiness of rice holds the Great Wall together,’ writes Jonathan Drori, whose latest book, The Stuff That Stuff Is Made Of, shines the spotlight on 30 different plants that have had a profound, and often surprising, impact on human existence.
A board member of both the Oxford and Cambridge Botanic Gardens, Prof Drori’s own interest in plants began in childhood. ‘I grew up in Kew,’ he explains. ‘My father had trained as a botanist before becoming an engineer and my mother was fascinated by plants, too — especially by the things she could make from them. ‘Our regular visits to Kew Gardens were enlivened by my parents’ stories about the plants; we’d eat bits of them as we walked around. On one occasion, my father even allowed me to lick the top of an opium poppy. It had no effect, although I doubt social services would have been impressed!’
A career in science and technology eventually led Prof Drori back to his beloved Kew and botany. He now works to educate people about plants and their extraordinary applications. As the example of the Chinese rice-mortar shows, it’s not only as food that they have had a profound effect on human life. ‘The guttapercha tree, which grows in the rainforests of South-East Asia, is a good example of how we use plants in unexpected ways,’ he points out. ‘The British first spotted its potential in Singapore in the 1840s, when a visiting East India Company surgeon, William Montgomerie, noticed the locals wore waterproof shoes made from latex extracted from the tree trunk.’
The uses of guttapercha trees initially had a big impact on footwear, furniture and household goods.
Initially, the impact was largely felt on footwear, furniture and household goods, but, a decade later, Werner von Siemens, a German inventor living in London, realised that guttapercha could be used to insulate the wires that sent electrical telegraph signals. ‘Siemens’s invention meant that telegraph, and later telephone, cables could be laid under the sea,’ explains Prof Drori: the guttapercha tree is the foundation of our modern global telecommunications network. Eventually, synthetic materials would supersede it as under-water insulation, but dentists still find a use for it today. If you have ever had the misfortune to have root-canal surgery, the chances are you’ll have some guttapercha latex in your mouth.
Another unlikely source of life’s vital ingredients lies beneath the waves. ‘In Britain, we probably wouldn’t think of ourselves as great users of seaweed,’ Prof Drori observes. ‘In fact, the alginates extracted from giant kelp and other brown seaweeds are part of our everyday lives. They are used in ice cream to prevent crystals forming, giving it a smoother texture; and in sauces, syrups and chocolate milk to make them thicker. Alginates make bread and cakes fluffier, cream cheese creamier and the head on your pint of beer foamier.’
Seaweed — abundant at St Marys island near Whitley Bay, and in our food products.
That’s not all: ‘We use alginates in products that must hold water and where the ingredients must not separate — you’ll find them in your toothpaste, in lipstick and moisturisers. The ingredient that makes paint non-drip? That comes from seaweed, too.’ Then there’s the humble cotton plant. ‘When people think of cotton, they will inevitably think of its use as clothing,’ says Prof Drori, ‘but few of us would consider that until recently most of our “paper” money gained its strength and durability from cotton. In fact, US banknotes, and most Euro notes, are made from a mix of cotton and linen and contain no traditional paper (first made from mulberry bark by the Chinese thousands of years ago) at all.’
As an aside, Prof Drori notes that when cotton was first brought to Europe by Arab traders in about the 8th century, its origins were a mystery. ‘One English travel writer claimed that cotton was harvested from a tree that grew tiny lambs on the tips of its branches. The branches apparently bent under the weight, allowing the little lambs to nibble grass when they were hungry…’
As human technology has advanced, so have the uses found for plants. Bamboo, which grows so fast you can sometimes actually hear it popping and snapping if you stand close enough, has been harnessed for thousands of years to make everything from scaffolding to flutes, via chopsticks and fishing rods — but it was the experiments of a 19th-century French chemist, Hilaire de Chardonnet, who created ‘bamboo silk’ from the cellulose fibres of the giant grass, that paved the way for our modern bamboo textiles industry. What was once used to prop up runner beans and roses is now worn as underwear.
Workers constructing bamboo scaffolding on the side of a building in Hong Kong, China.
Plants under fire
Although the French make jelly from dandelion flowers — and you can happily add the leaves to a salad — the idea that the plant might be useful for much beyond ruining a nice lawn comes as a surprise to most. Yet the dandelion played a part in winning the Second World War. Dandelion roots exude latex, and the latex of the Russian dandelion contains large quantities of rubber. When normal rubber supplies from the Far East ran short towards the end of the conflict, the Americans and Russians planted hundreds of square miles of dandelion fields, harvested the latex and used the rubber for tyres and engine parts. Fermented kelp, meanwhile, produces acetone, a vital ingredient in high explosives. ‘It was used extensively during the First World War by munitions factories,’ Prof Drori clarifies. ‘Incidentally, horse chestnuts were also collected for the same purpose.’ Dandelions, kelp and conkers, then: the secret weapons that won the war.
The bark of the cork oak tree also has a surprising multiplicity of uses. These days, cork is invariably best known as a stopper for wine bottles, as a cushioning material in the insoles of shoes and as bathroom flooring. In the past, however, it was used in life jackets, as sound insulation in submarines and as protection against the cold in polar exploration ships such as Roald Amundsen’s Fram. Today, however, it’s travelling far further than distant Antarctica. ‘What is amazing,’ Prof Drori enthuses, ‘is that this incredibly traditional material, which mankind has been working with for about 5,000 years, is being used by NASA on its most advanced spacecraft. It is deployed as cladding on launch rockets such as the Atlas V and the new Space Launch System, as well as in the heat shields of the Space Shuttle.’ A material that was first used for fishing floats in southern Iberia in about 3000BC has helped propel robotic missions to Jupiter and Mars. ‘Despite all of our experimentation and advanced technologies,’ he says, ‘there is still nothing to top cork as a lightweight insulator against extreme heat.’
Although he has written extensively on plants and trees for many years, even Prof Drori was surprised by some of the things he uncovered during his research for his book. ‘The coconut tree is one of the most productive of all plants: you can drink the milk, eat the pulp, make sugar from the flowers, doormats and brushes from the husks, and waterproof thatched roofs from the leaves. What I didn’t know, however, was that the air filters on the International Space Station contain granules of charcoal made from coconut shells.’ These granules are, it seems, the most effective way of dealing with the odours that inevitably accumulate in an air-tight module containing seven human beings. ‘It turns out that coconut charcoal is the best substance on Earth for nullifying astronauts breaking wind,’ he laughs.
This feature originally appeared in the January 21, 2026, issue of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
