Plants are so much more than what companies market them as

I could almost just let the title speak for itself. I’m kind of getting fed up with about 95 percent of the natural products industry these days because our wonderful plant friends are being reduced to narrowly boxed in categories.
As I always mention, plants have ways they survive in the wild; they are doing this for their own survival, not to benefit a corporations profit margin. We have ways of using these survival strategies to our benefit.
For example, a volatile oil that a plant produces to protect itself from microbes can protect US from microbes too. A gel that keeps a desert plant cool and moist can help us when we deal with excessive heat, a flavonoid that a plant produces to protect its cells from damage can be utilized by us for that too. A plant in alkaline soil may collect all sorts of minerals that we can utilize.
Many plants do a wide variety of these and many many other things to survive, particularly in harsh environments. Plants are far more complex than many people give them credit for.
This is why I often cringe at the way Herbs are marketed.