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Plants are in a life-and-death struggle
Aside from a few tree-hugging enthusiasts and some plant scientists, not many people appreciate how incredibly competitive plants can be. 'Nature red in tooth and claw' is not limited to the animal kingdom. Although plants are fixed in one spot, they are far from defenceless. Plants face challenges both from the environment and from organisms that see them as a food source. Everybody wants to eat plants. Not just insects and grazing mammals, but also bacteria, fungi, nematodes, and viruses. No wonder that plants have developed such amazing weapons.
How plants defend themselves
Some defences are purely physical. Tough skins, thorns, stinging hairs, and prickles make it difficult or unpleasant for an animal to eat the plant. Another kind of defence is, surprisingly, speed. Immobile plants can produce seeds to be distributed through wind, rain, and the unwitting help of animals. If a seedling can get through its life cycle in a hurry, before hungry predators learn of its location, it might be able to finish another round of seed production. We observe the result of this approach in certain weeds, which seem to appear from nowhere, hide in the shade of dense shrubs, and only burst forth into sunlight in time for the visit of the Gardening Society.
Most plant defences are chemical in nature. When chemists identify a protective chemical, one of the main questions is whether it acts as a repellent, an insecticide, or an antibiotic. The first part of this book discusses the kinds of protective chemicals, mostly from plants. The narrow-minded human-oriented question is whether these natural pesticides affect our health. However, we can't avoid considering the 'sociology' and 'psychology' of how plants interact with other creatures.
Why so many plants taste bitter
A surprising number of natural plant pesticides are bitter to our tastes, yet there is no common chemical structure... [In the last year or two more research on taste biology has completely changed my thinking compared to what I wrote in my book. Please look at How Taste Buds Work: Our taste buds use at least two dozen different biochemical sensors to detect as many kinds of natural poisons as possible.]