From adopting and popularising exotic plants as part of a nation’s diet to discovering, or sometimes stumbling upon characteristics that facilitate technological advances, our relationship with the plant kingdom is as broad, wonderful and strange as the plants themselves. These pithy stories span species celebrated as tribal fodder to delicacies elevated as some of our most valued possessions, from the ultimate symbols of devotion and love to campaigns that resulted in genocide, revolt and the shaping of the global political landscape.