Human uses of plants or dried flowers. Ornamental plants have sometimes changed the course of history, as in tulipomania. Basic biological research has often been done with plants. In genetics, the breeding of pea plants allowed Gregor Mendel to derive the basic laws governing inheritance, and examination of chromosomes in maize allowed Barbara McClintock to demonstrate their connection to inherited traits. The plant "Arabidopsis thaliana" is used in laboratories as a model organism to understand how genes control the growth and development of plant structures. NASA predicts that space stations or space colonies will one day rely on plants for life support. Scientific advances
Gregor Mendel the Moravian-Silesian border, Austrian Empire (now a part of the Czech Republic). He was the son of Anton and Rosine (Schwirtlich) Mendel and had one older sister, Veronika, and one younger, Theresia. They lived and worked on a farm which had been owned by the Mendel family for at least 130 years (the house where Mendel was born is now a museum devoted to Mendel). During his childhood, Mendel worked as a gardener and studied beekeeping. As a young man, he attended gymnasium in Opava (called "Troppau" in German). He had to take four months off during his gymnasium studies