Evolution of Medicinal Plants?

[NavajoEverclear]

Did plants which produce chemicals with medical uses to animals, including to humans, evolve toward having such uses, because that would increase their chance of being preserved?

 

it seems too convenient that a plant would make things that have any use to animals, (except food because in that case i think it was the animals that had to adapt to make use of what is available to eat), such as being pollenated, and in the case of humans, cultivated (far as i know there arent other animals that deliberately plant things).

 

Well please enlighten me cause i am very interested if the answer is known

[Skye]

Alot of them are toxins that discourage things from eating them. Often they work by affecting neurotransmission, so in lower concentrations they make good drugs. Others kill things we want dead, like insects or bacteria.

[LucidDreamer]

A great many medicinal plants produce chemicals that are useful to the plant that also happen to have medicinal properties to animals. Some plant chemicals may have evolved to actually prevent animals from eating them, such as pain medications or sleep medications. Some chemicals evolved to prevent microbe infections or insect infestations, and thus were useful to man for the same reasons. Some chemicals, such as vitamins in fruit, may have evolved to attract animals because the animals provided a service to the plants.

[Mokele]

Another, less benevolent source of such chemicals: Many plants produce and exude chemicals from their roots to kill or weaken any other plant (or other plants of certain species) that tries to grow near them.

 

Plants are just a vicious as animals, but they have to use chemicals rather than teeth and claws.

 

Mokele

[NavajoEverclear]

Another' date=' less benevolent source of such chemicals: Many plants produce and exude chemicals from their roots to kill or weaken any other plant (or other plants of certain species) that tries to grow near them.

 

Plants are just a vicious as animals, but they have to use chemicals rather than teeth and claws.

 

Mokele[/quote']

 

sounds pretty baddass