20-Year Prospect

20-Year Prospect

Unless there's a major die-off of plant life, botanists will have jobs twenty years from now. After all, they still have plants to discover, like the one that eats nickel without going kaput from poisoning.

Botanists also make huge contributions to medical science. Two-fifths of the drugs prescribed to patients in the United States hail from plants, as do the twenty best-selling prescription drugs. Clearly, Shel Silverstein didn't call it "The Giving Tree" for nothin'.

And, as if botanists weren't busy enough, they're going to be run ragged thanks to climate change. In our hotter world, these scientists will be racing around, trying to document and maybe save species that will otherwise go extinct, while also attempting to figure out how to halt the long-feared Invasion of the Alien Plant Life.

So, botanists of the future, you have a long list of stuff to do, including saving people and plants. Better get busy.