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American Heritage Dictionary:

bot·a·ny

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(bŏt'n-ē) pronunciation
n., pl., -nies.
    1. The science or study of plants.
    2. A book or scholarly work on this subject.
  2. The plant life of a particular area: the botany of the Ohio River valley.
  3. The characteristic features and biology of a particular kind of plant or plant group.

[Back-formation from earlier botanic, botanical, from Late Latin botanicus. See botanical.]


Britannica Concise Encyclopedia:

botany

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Pinnate leaf, illustration from the first edition of Encyclopædia
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Pinnate leaf, illustration from the first edition of Encyclopædia (credit: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.)
Branch of biology that deals with plants, including the study of the structure, properties, and biochemical processes of all forms of plant life, as well as plant classification, plant diseases, and the interactions of plants with their physical environment. The science of botany traces back to the ancient Greco-Roman world but received its modern impetus in Europe in the 16th century, mainly through the work of physicians and herbalists, who began to observe plants seriously to identify those useful in medicine. Today the principal branches of botanical study are morphology, physiology, ecology, and systematics (the identification and ranking of all plants). Subdisciplines include bryology (the study of mosses and liverworts), pteridology (the study of ferns and their relatives), paleobotany (the study of fossil plants), and palynology (the study of modern and fossil pollen and spores). forestry, horticulture.

For more information on botany, visit Britannica.com.

McGraw-Hill Science & Technology Encyclopedia:

Botany

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That branch of biological science which embraces the study of plants and plant life. Botanical studies may range from microscopic observations of the smallest and obscurest plants to the study of the trees of the forest. One botanist may be interested mainly in the relationships among plants and in their geographic distribution, whereas another may be primarily concerned with structure or with the study of the life processes taking place in plants.

Botany may be divided by subject matter into several specialties, such as plant anatomy, plant chemistry, plant cytology, plant ecology (including autecology and synecology), plant embryology, plant genetics, plant morphology, plant physiology, plant taxonomy, ethnobotany, and paleobotany. It may also be divided according to the group of plants being studied; for example, agostology, the study of grasses; algology (phycology), the study of algae; bryology, the study of mosses; mycology, the study of fungi; and pteridology, the study of ferns. Bacteriology and virology are also parts of botany in a broad sense. Furthermore, a number of agricultural subjects have botany as their foundation. Among these are agronomy, floriculture, forestry, horticulture, landscape architecture, and plant breeding. See also Agriculture; Agronomy; Bacteriology; Cell biology; Ecology; Floriculture; Genetics; Landscape architecture; Paleobotany; Plant anatomy; Plant growth; Plant morphogenesis; Plant pathology; Plant physiology; Plant taxonomy.

Antonyms by Answers.com:

botany

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Definition: plant study
Antonyms: zoology

Gale Encyclopedia of US History:

Botany

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The history of botany in America has several themes: the identification and study of new species discovered in the New World; the transformation of the field away from classification based on morphology, or shape, and toward interest in physiology and, later, genetics; the concomitant specialization and professionalization of botany, a subject that was originally relatively open to amateur practitioners, including women; and the development of American botanical research to rival the initially dominant European centers in England, France, and Germany. The European Renaissance had seen a revival of interest in botany and in ancient botanical works that was aided by the invention of the printing press in 1453, which allowed for a uniformity of plant depictions that hand-drawn manuscripts could not ensure.

Discoveries in the New World

The exploration of the New World, beginning with Columbus's voyage of 1492, was marked by the discovery of new flora and fauna, enthusiastically documented and described by travelers. It was not uncommon for those who wrote about the Americas to describe the plants and animals they had seen in terms of familiar European species, and, indeed, sometimes to mistakenly identify American species as being the same as European species. However, since plants do not move—unlike animals that might offer colonial settlers and travelers only a glimpse before disappearing—many American plants were quickly identified to be distinct from similar species in the Old World. Although Native Americans had developed their own classifications of North American flora, and although Native Americans were often a source of knowledge for colonists learning about the uses of new plants, Europeans tended to impose their own classifications onto the plants of the New World.

At the time, the discovery of new species posed a theological problem for European Christians, as the description of Noah's Ark insisted that Noah had gathered every kind of plant, while the New World contained many plants not part of the European and Asian ecosystems. Questions quickly arose as to whether there had once been a land bridge between the Americas and Eurasia and, even prior to Darwin, whether American plant species were modified variations on European species.

Moreover, some plants from the Americas became quite profitable crops for Europeans, most notably tobacco and chocolate, and many Europeans came over to explore and study the new plants. The first notable publication on the flora of the Americas was by Nicolás Monardes, who never traveled to the New World but wrote on its plants in his 1574 Historia Medicinal, which was translated into English by John Frampton as Joyfull Newes out of the Newe Founde Worlde (1577). The work was primarily concerned with the medicinal benefits of the plants and herbs in the Americas, and, indeed, many of the practitioners of botany in the sixteenth, seventeenth, eighteenth, and even into the nineteenth centuries were also trained in medicine and were interested in the possible new cures available in undocumented American plants.

However, amateurs also made important contributions to the study of American botanicals, examining the plants in local areas, presenting their findings at botanical societies, swapping samples with other botanists and sending plants back to Europe, and cultivating herbaria and arboreta. From colonial times until the mid-nineteenth century, the work of amateurs in finding, studying, and documenting new species was important to the study of botany as a whole. A primary example is Jane Colden (1724–1766), the daughter of the botanist Cadwallader Colden. Tutored only by her father, Jane Colden studied and drew the plants of New York, classifying hundreds of plants, including the gardenia, which she discovered.

Jane Colden was especially renowned for understanding and using the Linnaean classification scheme. Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), a Swedish doctor and botanist, developed his hierarchy throughout his life, his most notable publications including the Systema Naturae (1735), GeneraPlantarum (1737), and Species Plantarum (1753). The Linnaean system, which has since been greatly revised, divided animals and plants into kingdoms, classes, orders, genera, and species, all written in Latin. Each species was given a two-part (binomial) name of genus and species.

Classification

Linnaeus's classification system greatly influenced eighteenth-century botany in America. Some of his students came over to categorize the species of the New World, most significantly Pehr Kalm, who traveled through the Great Lakes, the Mid-Atlantic colonies, and Canada, bringing back samples. Meanwhile, colonial settlers like John Bartram (1699–1777), Cadwallader Colden (1688–1776), Humphry Marshall (1722–1801), and others worked to incorporate the local flora into the work of Linnaeus, which provided a new sense of order for those working on studying the plants and animals of the overwhelmingly diverse and novel New World.

But although the Linnaean system was helpful, it could not survive the strain of the thousands of new discoveries in the Americas and Asia. Plant classifications based on reproduction resulted in categories that contained obviously widely diverging plants. In particular, Linnaeus was challenged by French botanists who emphasized grouping plants by shape (morphology). Antoine Laurent de Jussieu's (1748–1836) 1789 Genera Plantarum prompted the reorganizing of classification by appearance and added levels to the taxonomy.

The Jussieu modifications quickly, but not uncontroversially, became added to botanical literature, although the Linnaean system continued to be used in many prominent American publications through the early nineteenth century. Meanwhile, French botanists made other contributions to the study of North American plants. André Michaux (1746–1802) and his son, François André (1770–1855), traveled through much of eastern North America, from Canada to the Bahamas, observing and collecting. The end result of their massive researches was the 1803 Flora Boreali-Americana, the first large-scale compilation of North American plants. The work of the Michaux drew, not uncritically, on the reforms of Jussieu.

Nineteenth-Century American Botanists

The Michaux volumes encouraged revisions, the first coming in 1814 with the Flora Americae Septentrionalis of Frederick Pursh (1774–1820), which incorporated findings from the Lewis and Clark Expedition and thus contained information about western America. Pursh's contemporary, Thomas Nuttall (1786–1859), was born and died in England, but his interest, education, and work in botany were conducted primarily in America, where he explored the south and west, collecting and publishing his findings. Although he is known for his extensive discoveries, Nuttall also wrote the 1818 Genera of the North American Plants and 1827 Introduction to Systematic and Physiological Botany. His work is symbolic of a turn from European-dominated study of North American plants toward American specialists in native species. Although Americans had always played important roles in the discovery, cataloging, and study of local plants, the early and mid-nineteenth century saw the burgeoning of work by American botanists, both amateur and professional. Meanwhile, the American government sponsored expeditions to find and collect plant species in the less studied areas of the south and west of America.

Among the American botanists of the early nineteenth century, the most famous are Jacob Bigelow (1786–1879), Amos Eaton (1776–1842), John Torrey (1796–1873), and Thomas Nuttall (1786–1859). Bigelow, who was trained as a doctor, was primarily interested in the medicinal uses of plants, but he also surveyed the flora of Boston for his Florula Bostoniensis (1814). Additionally, he did work in physiology, which was already a topic of considerable interest in the first decades of the century and would come to dominate morphology in botanical concerns by the end of the nineteenth century.

Amos Eaton gained his reputation primarily through his Manual of Botany (first published in 1817, but revised and enlarged through many editions), which became the basic botanical teaching text of the first half of the nineteenth century. Eaton, who also worked in geology and chemistry, encouraged the participation of women in science, although indeed women were already quite well represented in botany, which he noted. In part this botanical activity by women was due to the fact that contemporary botany required little laboratory equipment: discoveries could be made by anyone who was diligent and well read in botany, and so graduate degrees or access to laboratories—both largely denied at the time to women—were unnecessary to botanical work. However, although Eaton emphasized field work, the most accessible kind of botanical study, he was also part of a trend toward including laboratory experiments.

Eaton's teaching and text were very influential, perhaps most importantly in botany upon John Torrey, whom Eaton met while serving a prison sentence for forgery—a charge he denied. Torrey was the son of a man who worked for the State Prison of New York, and Eaton gave the young Torrey lessons in a variety of scientific subjects, including botany. While Torrey went on to have a career that included work in medicine, geology, mineralogy, and chemistry, he is primarily remembered for his botanical work, cataloging New York flora, collaborating with Asa Gray, creating a renowned herbarium, promoting government-financed expeditions, utilizing—albeit inconsistently—the classification work of John Lindley, and serving as the first president of the Torrey Botanical Society, a group of prominent amateur and professional botanists in New York. The Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Society, which began publication in 1870, is the oldest American botanical journal.

Although Bigelow, Eaton, Torrey, Nuttall, and others did much to encourage and expand knowledge of native plants, it is Asa Gray (1810–1888) who takes center stage in the history of American botany in the nineteenth century. Gray published A Flora of North America (1838–1843) with Torrey, which drew on the Lindley classification system, which was a development from Jussieu's "natural system." Gray's textbooks replaced those of Eaton, and the botanical research center he set up at Harvard cultivated many of the next generation of botanists and encouraged work in anatomy, cellular structure, and physiology, realms that were dominated by German botanists. Interested in East Asian flora as well as that of North America, Gray quickly supported Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory as expounded in the 1859 Origin of Species because he had noticed regional variation himself. This drew him into conflict with another Harvard professor, the zoologist Louis Agassiz, who was a prominent anti-Darwinian. However, evolution soon became a guiding principle in botanical study.

Theoretical Research

The twentieth century saw the rise of American research devoted to the theoretical aspects of botany, areas in which America had typically lagged behind Europe, as American botanists became more involved in experiments, physiology, anatomy, molecular biology, biochemistry, and genetics, and less involved in the discovery of new species. While Darwin could not provide an explanation for the origins of variation and the inheritance of characteristics, Gregor Mendel (1822–1884), a Moravian monk, offered hereditary principles based on experiments with pea plants in his Versuche über Pflanzenhybriden (Experiments in plant hybridization; 1865, 1869). Although Mendel's research went unacknowledged until 1900, when rediscovered it was profoundly influential in turning the research edge of botany, which was already moving from morphology to physiology, toward genetics as well. In addition, during the first half of the twentieth century, ecological research, which tied together the plants and animals of a habitat, began to thrive, as evidenced by the work of Henry Chandler Cowles (1869–1939) and others. Mathematics was put to use in the study of plant and animal populations, and in 1942 Raymond Lindeman (1915–1942) demonstrated the "trophic-dynamic aspect" of ecology to show how energy moves from individual to individual through a local environment.

Since the 1960s, plant physiology has looked more to understanding the relationship between plants and their surrounding environment: studying plant reactions to environmental change, both with a look to the evolutionary mechanisms involved and concerning the ongoing degradation of the global environment.

Moreover, the introduction of genetic research has prompted yet another change in taxonomy, with the rise of phylogenetics, in which variation is traced to the genetic level, allowing botanists to reorganize classification by evolutionary relatedness, replacing previous categories. Relatedly, work on population genetics, genetic engineering, and genomics (the study of all of the genes in a DNA sequence) has blossomed since the 1960s, a no-table recent achievement being the completion of the Arabadopsis thaliana genome—the first plant genome completely sequenced—in 2000. Although some of the work was completed by American researchers and partly funded by the American government, the project represents the prominent international collaborations that are shaping botany today, with aid also provided by the European Union and the Japanese government and research carried out in America, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Japan.

Bibliography

Evans, Howard Ensign. Pioneer Naturalists: The Discovery and Naming of North American Plants and Animals. New York: Henry Holt, 1993.

Greene, Edward Lee. Landmarks of Botanical History. Edited by Frank N. Egerton. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1983.

Humphrey, Harry Baker. Makers of North American Botany. New York: Ronald Press, 1961.

Keeney, Elizabeth B. The Botanizers: Amateur Scientists in Nineteenth-Century America. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992.

Mauseth, James D. Botany: An Introduction to Plant Biology. 2d ed. Boston: Jones and Bartlett, 1998.

Morton, A. G. History of Botanical Science: An Account of the Development of Botany from Ancient Times to the Present Day. New York: Academic Press, 1981.

Reveal, James L. Gentle Conquest: The Botanical Discovery of North America with Illustrations from the Library of Congress. Washington, D.C.: Starwood, 1992.

Stuckey, Ronald L., ed. Development of Botany in Selected Regions of North America before 1900. New York: Arno Press, 1978.

—Caroline R. Sherman

Columbia Encyclopedia:

Botany

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botany, science devoted to the study of plants. Botany, microbiology, and zoology together compose the science of biology. Humanity's earliest concern with plants was with their practical uses, i.e., for fuel, clothing, shelter, and, particularly, food and drugs. The establishment of botany as an intellectual science came in classical times. In the 4th cent. B.C., Aristotle and his pupil Theophrastus worked out descriptions and principles of plant types and functions that remained the prototype for botanical observation for 1,000 years. During the stagnant period of the Middle Ages the knowledge of the classical scholars was preserved in the European monasteries and by the Arabs in the Middle East. In the 16th and 17th cent. an interest in botany revived in Europe and spread to America by way of European conquest and colonization. At that time both botany and the art of gardening (see garden) stressed the utility of plants for man; the popular herbal, describing the medical uses of plants, mingled current superstition with fact. In the late 17th and the 18th cent. the influence of the ancient scholars was modified by the growth of scientific botany. Through careful and accurate observation the sciences of taxonomy and morphology (see biology) were developed, providing the basis for the first systematic classification of organisms, chiefly in the work of Linnaeus. With the microscope came the development of plant anatomy and research on the cell. New knowledge of the principles of chemistry and physics spurred experimentation in plant physiology, notably the early work of Stephen Hales on the sources and manufacture of plant food, which led to studies of such basic processes as photosynthesis. Modern botany has expanded into all areas of biology, including molecular biology, and has developed such specialties as ethnobotany, which studies the use of plants in preindustrial societies. Perhaps most significant was the work of Mendel in plant breeding at the middle (1859) of the 19th cent., from which grew the science of genetics. Allied with experimental botany are the various practical aspects that have developed into specific scientific disciplines (e.g., agriculture, agronomy, horticulture, and forestry).

Bibliography

See J. von Sachs, History of Botany (tr. 1890, repr. 1967); C. L. Wilson and W. E. Loomis, Botany (4th ed. 1967); C. B. Lees, Gardens, Plants and Man (1970); A. G. Morton, History of Botanical Science (1981).

Gale Encyclopedia of the Early Modern World:

Botany

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From antiquity into the late eighteenth century, the medical utility of plants provided the primary motive for studying them. However, from the late fifteenth century on, other reasons for the investigation of plants became increasingly important and gave botany a disciplinary and professional identity distinct from medicine. These included: explicating classical texts; portraying plants accurately in works of art; collecting rarities for natural history cabinets, gardens, and museums; exploiting natural resources; glorifying the wonders of creation; and satisfying the curiosity of natural philosophers. The primary thrust of botany in early modern Europe was plant identification, description, and classification, an effort that culminated in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when systematics assimilated morphology, reproduction, anatomy, and geography.

Late Fifteenth Century to Mid-Sixteenth Century

While editing the ancient authorities on medicinal plants—Pliny's Natural History and Dioscorides' De Materia medica (On the materials of medicine)—in the late fifteenth century, Italian humanists looked at living plants to resolve textual problems. In contrast to medieval doctors' dependence on illiterate herb-gatherers, medical humanists in the early sixteenth century strove to emulate Dioscorides' and Galen's firsthand experience with medicinal plants.

The lack of a shared vocabulary for plant description and nomenclature was circumvented by the addition of accurate, detailed, naturalistic woodcut illustrations to printed herbals—a key innovation introduced by Otto Brunfels's (1488–1534) Herbarum Vivae Eicones (Living images of plants, 1530) and Leonhard Fuchs's (1501–1534) Historia Stirpium (Notable commentaries on the history of plants, 1542), and imitated by virtually every herbal thereafter. The failure of Leonardo da Vinci's (1452–1519) superb drawings and observations of plant forms—unfinished at his death in 1519—to influence early modern botany underscores the scientific consequences of coupling the technology of printing to skill in depicting plants.

Beginning in the 1530s, medical schools at Padua, Pisa, Basel, and Montpellier established chairs of botany, required lectures, demonstrations, and field trips, and built botanical gardens. Students of Luca Ghini (1500–1556), professor of botany at Bologna and Pisa, spread his technique of preserving pressed, dried specimens throughout Europe.

Mid-Sixteenth Century to Early Seventeenth Century

The humanist physicians' desire to prescribe the precise plants named by classical authorities spurred Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501–1578), a Habsburg court physician, to prepare a voluminous illustrated commentary on Dioscorides (first edition, 1544), the best-selling herbal of the period. Its revisions and enlargements helped Renaissance botanists realize that they knew far more plants than their ancient counterparts.

The immense "universal" herbals of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century—published or projected by major botanists from most European countries, including William Turner (c. 1508–1568), Conrad Gessner (1516–1565), Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605), Jacques Dalechamps (D'Aléchamps, Dalechampius, 1513–1588), Charles de L'Escluse (Clusius, 1526–1609), Matthias de L'Obel (Lobelius, 1538–1616), Rembert Dodoens (Dodonaeus, 1517–1585), Jean Bauhin (1541–1612), Caspar Bauhin (1560–1624), and John Gerard (1564–1637)—represented efforts to describe both long-familiar plants and the flood of new species. Plants entered European gardens and herbaria through the voyages of discovery and conquest and by exploration of local habitats. Informal networks of professional and amateur enthusiasts surmounted religious and political divisions and fostered a rapid international exchange of specimens, books, pictures, and observations.

To organize their entries, most herbals used a pragmatic mixture of systems, grouping some plants by their uses, others by similarities of form or habitats. Some herbals, emblem books, and books on natural magic—reflecting astrology, Paracelsan chemistry, and the search for symbolic significance in nature—stressed plants' hidden, inner properties, manifested by distinctive external "signatures." Appealing to Aristotle and Theophrastus's philosophical emphasis on growth and reproduction as the essential characteristics of the vegetative soul, Andrea Cesalpino (Caesalpinus, 1524–1603) stressed resemblances of seeds and fruits in grouping plants in his influential De Plantis Libri XVI (On plants, 1583).

Early Seventeenth Century to Late Eighteenth Century

Caspar Bauhin (1560–1624), professor of botany and anatomy at Basel, took the first critical step toward a single botanical lexicon of plant names: his Pinax Theatri Botanici (Pinax, i.e., Index, for the botanical realm, 1623) summarized the synonyms and literature for some six thousand plants—ten times the number in Dioscorides—and assigned them brief descriptive Latin names that emphasized their affinities. (Pinax remains an indispensable guide to identifying plants in earlier works.) An equally important step came from Joachim Jung's (1587–1657) astute analysis of plant parts, which reached John Ray (1627–1705)—English cleric, naturalist, natural philosopher, and fellow of the Royal Society—by 1660 in manuscript. Between 1660 and 1704, Ray linked taxonomy, nomenclature, morphology, and bibliography in a series of strictly botanical books that brought together first-hand accounts of many previously undescribed plants, new technical terminology (such as petal, calyx, cotyledon), close observations of growth and form, and deep reflection on method.

Ray spelled out the combinations of essential morphological features that defined natural classes of plants. While acknowledging natural groupings at least at the genus/species level (categories that went back to Aristotle), the French botanist, J. P. de Tournefort (1656–1708), countered with a convenient and widely adopted artificial system of classification based primarily on the disposition of flower parts.

The chemical composition of plants and the form and function of plant parts, previously regarded as unimportant, came under the scrutiny of botanists trained in iatrochemistry—notably Guy de la Brosse (1586–1641), the founder of the Paris Jardin des Plantes in 1640—and in microscopy. Robert Hooke (1635–1703) and Nehemiah Grew (1641–1712) in England and Marcello Malphighi (1628–1694) in Italy reported to the Royal Society in the late seventeenth century on their experimental investigations of plant cells and tissue structures. Stephen Hales (1677–1761) in the 1720s and Joseph Priestley (1733–1804) and Jan Ingen-Housz (1730–1799) half a century later devised chemical and physical experiments to measure plant nutrition and metabolism.

The demonstration of sexual reproduction in flowering plants—in an obscure 1694 publication, De Sexu Plantarum Epistola (On the sex of plants), by Rudolf Jacob Camerer (Camerarius), professor of medicine at Tübingen—both resolved a longstanding question and provided the brilliant Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) with the basis of a taxonomic system that overrode all earlier proposals.

Believing that God had created species and genera, Linnaeus embedded their essential characters in his binomial nomenclature—henceforth giving the terms "genus" and "species" distinctive scientific meanings. Although Linnaeus clearly recognized larger natural groupings (plant families were methodically elucidated by the French botanists Antoine-Laurent de Jussieu [1748–1836] and Michel Adanson [1727–1806] in the late eighteenth century), his Species Plantarum (Species of plants, 1753) constructed a deliberately artificial system of classification, easily understood by anyone—even "ladies"—who could count the sexual parts of flowers. By imposing a common language and rational organization on the plant kingdom, Linnaeus made botany both a symbol of divine order and the epitome of Enlightenment science.

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Bauhinus, Casparus. Pinax Theatri Botanici. Basel, 1623.

Brunfelsius, Otho. Herbarum Vivae Eicones. Strasbourg, 1530.

Camerarius, Rudolphus Jacobus. De Sexu Plantarum Epistola. Tübingen, 1694.

Caesalpinus, Andreas. De Plantis Libri XVI. Florence, 1583.

Linnaeus, Carl. Species Plantarum. London, 1957–1959. A facsimile of the first edition, 1753.

Meyer, Frederick G., Emily Emmart Trueblood, and John L. Heller. The Great Herbal of Leonhart Fuchs: Vol. 1, Commentary; Vol. 2, De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes, 1542: Facsimile. Stanford, 1999.

Secondary Sources

Arber, Agnes. Herbals, Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany, 1470–1670. 3rd ed. Cambridge, U.K., and New York, 1986. Facsimile reprint of second edition (1938), with an introduction and annotations by William T. Stearn.

Findlen, Paula. Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy. Berkeley, 1994.

Koerner, Lisbet. Linnaeus: Nature and Nation. Cambridge, Mass., 1999.

Morton, A. G. History of Botanical Science: An Account of the Development of Botany from Ancient Times to the Present Day. London and New York, 1981.

Reeds, Karen Meier. Botany in Medieval and Renaissance Universities. New York, 1991.

—KAREN REEDS

Devil's Dictionary:

botany

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A cynical view of the world by Ambrose Bierce


n.

The science of vegetables -- those that are not good to eat, as well as those that are. It deals largely with their flowers, which are commonly badly designed, inartistic in color, and ill- smelling.

Taylor's Dictionary for Gardeners:

botany

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The science or study of plants.

Dictionary of Cultural Literacy: Science:

botany

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The scientific study and categorization of plants. (See fruit, photosynthesis, and plant kingdom.)

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Bradford's Crossword Solver's Dictionary:

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Wikipedia on Answers.com:

Botany

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"Botanist" redirects here. A botanist is a person engaged in botany.
"Plant biology" redirects here. For the journal, see Functional Plant Biology.
For other uses, see Botany (disambiguation) and Botanic (disambiguation).
Pinguicula grandiflora commonly known as a Butterwort

Botany, plant science(s), or plant biology (from Ancient Greek βοτάνη botane, "pasture, grass, or fodder" and that from βόσκειν boskein, "to feed or to graze"), a discipline of biology, is the science of plant life.[1][2][3] Traditionally, the science included the study of fungi, algae, and viruses.

Botany covers a wide range of scientific disciplines including structure, growth, reproduction, metabolism, development, diseases, chemical properties, and evolutionary relationships among taxonomic groups. Botany began with early human efforts to identify edible, medicinal and poisonous plants, making it one of the oldest branches of science. Nowadays, botanists study about 400,000 species of living organisms.

The beginnings of modern-style classification systems can be traced to the 1500s-1700 when several attempts were made to scientifically classify plants. In the 19th and 20th centuries, major new techniques were developed for studying plants, including microscopy, chromosome counting, and analysis of plant chemistry. In the last two decades of the 20th century, DNA was used to more accurately classify plants.

Botanical research focuses on plant population groups, evolution, physiology, structure, and systematices. Subdisciplines of botany include agronomy, forestry, horticulture, and paleobotany. Key scientists in the history of botany include Theophrastus, Ibn al-Baitar, Carl Linnaeus, Gregor Johann Mendel, and Norman Borlaug.

Contents

History

Main article: History of botany
The traditional tools of a botanist

Early botany

The history of botany begins with ancient writings on, and classifications of, plants. Such writings are found in several early cultures. Examples of early botanical works have been found in Ancient Indian sacred texts, ancient Zoroastrian writings,[4] and ancient Chinese works.

Theophrastus (c. 371–287 BC) has been frequently referred to as the ”father of botany”.[5] The Greco-Roman world produced a number of botanical works including Theophrastus's Historia Plantarum and Dioscorides' De Materia Medica from the first century.[6]

Works from the medieval Muslim world included Ibn Wahshiyya's Nabatean Agriculture, Abū Ḥanīfa Dīnawarī's (828-896) the Book of Plants, and Ibn Bassal's The Classification of Soils. In the early 13th century, Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati, and Ibn al-Baitar (d. 1248) also wrote on botany.[7][8][9]

Early modern botany

Further information: Taxonomy#History of taxonomy
Crantz's Classis cruciformium..., 1769

German physician Leonhart Fuchs (1501–1566) was one of "the three founding fathers of botany", along with Otto Brunfels (1489–1534) and Hieronymus Bock (1498–1554) (also called Hieronymus Tragus).[10][11]

Valerius Cordus (1515–1544) authored a pharmacopoeia of lasting importance, the Dispensatorium in 1546.[12] Conrad von Gesner (1516–1565) and Nicholas Culpeper (1616–1654) also published herbals covering the medicinal uses of plants. Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605) was considered the "father of natural history", which included the study of plants. In 1665, using an early microscope, Robert Hooke discovered cells, a term he coined, in cork, and a short time later in living plant tissue.[13]

During the 18th century, systems of classification were developed that are comparable to diagnostic keys, where taxa are artificially grouped in pairs. The sequence of the taxa in keys is often unrelated to their natural or phyletic groupings.[14] By the 18th century an increasing number of new plants had arrived in Europe from newly discovered countries and the European colonies worldwide and a larger amount of plants became available for study. Botanical guides from this time were sparsely illustrated.[15] In 1754 Carl von Linné (Carl Linnaeus) divided the plant Kingdom into 25 classes with a taxonomy with a standardized binomial naming system for animal and plant species. He used a two-part naming scheme where the first name represented the genus and the second the species.[16] One of Linnaeus' classifications, the Cryptogamia, included all plants with concealed reproductive parts (mosses, liverworts and ferns), and algae and fungi.[17]

The increased knowledge of anatomy, morphology and life cycles, lead to the realization that there were more natural affinities between plants, than the sexual system of Linnaeus indicated. Adanson (1763), de Jussieu (1789), and Candolle (1819) all proposed various alternative natural systems that were widely followed. The ideas of natural selection as a mechanism for evolution required adaptations to the Candollean system, which started the studies on evolutionary relationships and phylogenetic classifications of plants.[18][19]

Botany was greatly stimulated by the appearance of the first "modern" text book, Matthias Schleiden's Grundzuge der Wissenschaftlichen, published in English in 1849 as Principles of Scientific Botany.[20] Carl Willdenow examined the connection between seed dispersal and distribution, the nature of plant associations, and the impact of geological history. The cell nucleus was discovered by Robert Brown in 1831.[21]

Modern botany

A considerable amount of new knowledge today is being generated from studying model plants like Arabidopsis thaliana. This weedy species in the mustard family was one of the first plants to have its genome sequenced. The sequencing of the rice (Oryza sativa) genome, its relatively small genome, and a large international research community have made rice an important cereal/grass/monocot model.[22] Another grass species, Brachypodium distachyon is also an experimental model for understanding genetic, cellular and molecular biology.[23] Other commercially important staple foods like wheat, maize, barley, rye, pearl millet and soybean are also having their genomes sequenced. Some of these are challenging to sequence because they have more than two haploid (n) sets of chromosomes, a condition known as polyploidy, common in the plant kingdom. A green alga, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, is model organism that has proven important in advancing knowledge of cell biology.[24]

In 1998 the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group published a phylogeny of flowering plants based on an analysis of DNA sequences from most families of flowering plants. As a result of this work, major questions such as which families represent the earliest branches in the genealogy of angiosperms are now understood. Investigating how plant species are related to each other allows botanists to better understand the process of evolution in plants.[25] Despite the study of model plants and DNA, there is continual ongoing work and discussion among taxonomists about how best to classify plants into various taxa.[26]

Scope and importance of botany

Hibiscus

Molecular, genetic and biochemical level through organelles, cells, tissues, organs, individuals, plant populations, and communities of plants are all aspects of plant life that are studied. At each of these levels a botanist might be concerned with the classification (taxonomy), structure (anatomy and morphology), or function (physiology) of plant life.[27]

Historically all living things were grouped as animals or plants,[28] and botany covered all organisms not considered animals. Some organisms included in the field of botany are no longer considered to belong to the plant (plantae) kingdom, which obtain their energy via photosynthesis, – these include bacteria (studied in bacteriology), fungi (mycology) including lichen-forming fungi (lichenology), non-chlorophyte algae (phycology) and viruses (virology). However, attention is still given to these groups by botanists, and fungi (including lichens), and photosynthetic protists are usually covered in introductory botany courses.[29][30]

The study of plants is vital because they are a fundamental part of life on Earth, which generates the oxygen, food, fibres, fuel and medicine that allow humans and other life forms to exist. Through photosynthesis, plants absorb carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that in large amounts can affect global climate. Just as importantly for us, plants release oxygen into the atmosphere during photosynthesis. Additionally, they prevent soil erosion and are influential in the water cycle.[31] Plants are crucial to the future of human society as they provide food, oxygen, beauty, medicine, habitat for animals, products for people, and create and preserve soil.[32] Paleobotanists study ancient plants in the fossil record. It is believed that early in the Earth's history, the evolution of photosynthetic plants altered the global atmosphere of the earth, changing the ancient atmosphere by oxidation.[33]

Human nutrition

Nearly all the food we eat comes (directly and indirectly) from plants, such as this American long grain rice

Virtually all foods come either directly from plants, or indirectly from animals that eat plants.[34] Plants are the fundamental base of nearly all food chains because they use the energy from the sun and nutrients from the soil and atmosphere, converting them into a form that can be consumed and utilized by animals; this is what ecologists call the first trophic level.[35] Botanists also study how plants produce food we can eat and how to increase yields and therefore their work is important in mankind's ability to feed the world and provide food security for future generations, for example, through plant breeding.[36] Botanists also study weeds, plants which are considered to be a nuisance in a particular location. Weeds are a considerable problem in agriculture, and botany provides some of the basic science used to understand how to minimize 'weed' impact in agriculture and native ecosystems.[37] Ethnobotany is the study of the relationships between plants and people, and when this kind of study is turned to the investigation of plant-people relationships in past times, it is referred to as archaeobotany or paleoethnobotany.[38]

Fundamental life processes

Botanical research has long had relevance to the understanding of fundamental biological processes other than just botany. Fundamental life processes such as cell division and protein synthesis can be studied using plants without the moral issues that come with conducting studies upon animals or humans. Gregor Mendel discovered the genetic laws of inheritance in this fashion by studying Pisum sativum (pea) inherited traits such as shape. What Mendel learned from studying plants has had far reaching benefits outside of botany. Similarly, 'jumping genes' were discovered by Barbara McClintock while she was studying maize.[39]

Medicine and materials

Many medicinal and recreational drugs, like tetrahydrocannabinol, caffeine, and nicotine come directly from the plant kingdom. Others are simple derivatives of botanical natural products; for example, aspirin is based on the pain killer salicylic acid which originally came from the bark of willow trees. As well, the narcotic analgesics such as morphine are derived from the opium poppy.[40] There may be many novel cures for diseases provided by plants, waiting to be discovered. Popular stimulants like coffee, chocolate, tobacco, and tea also come from plants. Most alcoholic beverages come from fermenting plants such as barley (beer), rice (sake) and grapes (wine).[41]

Hemp, cotton, wood, paper, linen, vegetable oils, some types of rope, and rubber are examples of materials made from plants. Silk can only be made by using the mulberry plant. Sugarcane, rapeseed, soy are some of the plants with a highly fermentable sugar or oil content which have recently been put to use as sources of biofuels, which are important alternatives to fossil fuels (see biodiesel).[42]

Environmental changes

In many different ways, plants can act a little like the 'miners' canary', an early warning system alerting us to important changes in our environment. Plants respond to and provide understanding of changes in on the environment:[43]

Research

Ecology

The biology of a population is greater than the collective biologies of its individuals. Multiple members of the same species in close proximity constitute a population. Different populations in proximity constitute a community, which in conjunction with its nonliving environment constitute an ecosystem. The relation of each organism to all other organisms and factors in its habitat and environment make up its ecology. This includes structure, genetics and mutations, metabolism, diversity, fitness, adaptation, climate, water, and soil condition. The conditions that constitute an organisms life cycle is its habitat.[44] Both negative and beneficial interactions with other organisms are parts of a plant's ecology. Herbivores eat plants, but plants can also defend against them. Some other organisms form beneficial relationships with plants, called mutualisms, for example with mycorrhizal fungi that provide nutrients, and honey bees that pollinate flowers. A biome is a large part of the earth that has very similar abiotic and biotic factors, climate, and geography, creating a typical ecosystem over that area that is characterized by its dominant plants. Examples include tundra and tropical rainforest.[45]

Evolution

A Punnett square depicting a cross between two pea plants heterozygous for purple (B) and white (b) blossoms

DNA provides the information for a plant's structure, metabolism, and biology. Genetics is the science of inheritance and the gene is its chemical basis. The same basic laws of genetics apply to both plants and animals. In sexual reproduction, offspring are often more fit than either parent since the stronger genes tend to be passed on to the next generation.[46] Mutations and natural selection result in a species acquiring new traits and eventually evolving into one or more new species. Population genetics is the study of allele frequency distribution and change under the influence of the four main evolutionary processes: natural selection, genetic drift, mutation and gene flow. Changes can also be caused by natural events such as a large meteor hitting Earth and selective breeding (artificial selection) of plants by humans for specific traits.[47]

Since the mid-20th century, there has been considerable debate over how the earliest forms of life evolved and how to classify them, especially at the kingdom and domain levels and organisms that are or have been considered bacteria. For example, the three-domain method separates Archaea and Bacteria, previously grouped into the single kingdom Monera (bacteria). In this system Eukaryota (nuclei-bearing eukaryotes). Archaea was separated because it was shown to have a completely separate evolutionary history. However, Thomas Cavalier-Smith rejects the three-domain system and places the Archea as a subkingdom of Bacteria. Cyanobacteria were once believed to be related to algae and hence studied by botanists. Even now they are studied by both botanists and bacteriologists.[48][49][50][51] Similarly, the Fungi (or Myceteae) were once considered plants but there is now uncertainty about how to classify them.[52]

The various divisions of algae are also taxonomically problematic as some are more clearly linked to plants than others. Their many differences in features such as biochemistry, pigmentation, and nutrient reserves show that they diverged very early in evolutionary time. The division Chlorophyta (green algae) is considered the ancestor of true plants. [53]

Nonvascular plants are embryophytes that do not have vascular tissue: mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. Many plants that are called "moss" actually are not. For example, Spanish moss (Tillandsia usneoides) is actually in the Bromeliaceae (pineapple) family. Nonvascular plants do not have xylem nor phloem.[54] After the development of xylem and phloem, vascualar plants developed along two lines: Cryptogams (non seed producing), which developed first, and spermatophytes (seed producing).[55] Spermatophytes are plants that produce seeds. Gymnosperms produce unenclosed seeds. Gymnosperms are the ancestors of Angiosperms, which produce a seed encased in a structure such as a carpel.[56][57]

Physiology

Further information: Autotroph
Five key areas of study within plant physiology.

Plant physiology is the energy the plant brings in acting upon materials brought into the plant via various mechanisms.[58] Sunlight, either through photosynthesis or cellular respiration, is the basis of all life. Photoautotrophs gather energy directly from sunlight. This includes all green plants, cyanobacteria and other bacteria that can photosynthesize. Heterotrophs take in organic molecules and respire them. This includes all animals, all fungi, all completely parasitic plants, and non-photosynthetic bacteria.[59] Respiration is the oxidation of carbon whereby it is broken down into simpler structures; essentially the opposite of photosynthesis.[60]

Transport processes are those by which molecules are moved within the organism, such as: membranes transporting material across themselves and enzymess moving electrons. This is how minerals and water get from roots to other parts of the plant. Diffusion, osmosis, and active transport are different ways transport can occur.[61] Examples of minerals that plants need are: nitrogen, phosphorus, phosphate, calcium, magnesium, and sulphur. Chemicals from the air, soil, and water in combination with sunlight form the basis of plant metabolism. Most of these elements come from minerals in a process called mineral nutrition.[62] Few plants live in stable unchanging environments. Most plants most adapt to a variety of environmental factors, including changes in temperature, light and moisture. The better a plant can cope with these changing conditions, the more likely it can survive over both the short and long term as well as a wider geographic range.[63] Cell types are unique and their nucleus stores most of the DNA.[64]

Structure

Roots, stems, leaves, and flowers of Lilium superbum.

Plant anatomy is the study of the internal cells and tissues of a plant; whereas plant morphology is the study of their general and external form.[65]

Understanding the structure and function of cells is fundamental to all of the biological sciences. All organisms have cells. Cell biology studies their structural and physiological properties. This includes responses to stimuli, reproduction, and development on the macroscopic scale, microscopic scale, and molecular level. The similarities and differences between the function of a cell are quite varied.[66] Plant cells are eukaryotic, ie, have a membrane-encased nucleus that carries genetic material.[67] With rare exceptions, plant cells also have a central vacuole, cytoplasm, cytosol, dictyosomes, endoplasmic reticulum, microbodies, microfilaments, microtubules, mitochondria, plasma membrane, plastids, protoplasm, ribosomes, storage products, and a cell wall.[68] Cells divide by processes known as karyokinesis and cytokinesis.[69]

The body of a plant contains three basic parts: roots, stems, and leaves. Roots anchor it to the ground, gather water and mineral nutrients from the soil, and produce hormones. Plants with horizontal-spreading roots, such as willows, produce shoots and those with fleshy taproots, such as beets and carrots, store carbohydrates.[70] Stems provide support to the leaves and store nutrients. Leaves gather sunlight and begin photosynthesis.[71] Large, flat, flexible, green leaves are called foliage leaves.[72] Gymnosperms are seed-producing plants which have open seeds, such as conifers, cycads, Gingko, and gnetophyta.[73] Angiosperms are seed-producing plants that produce flowers, having enclosed seeds. Some of the gymnosperms became the ancestors of the angiosperms.[56] Woody plants, such as azaleas and oaks, undergo a secondary growth phase resulting in two additional types of tissues: wood (secondary xylem) and bark (secondary phloem and cork). All gymnosperms and many angiosperms are woody plants.[74] Some plants reproduce sexually, some asexually, and some via both means.[75]

Systematics

Further information: Biological classification
Linnaeus's table of the Plant Kingdom ("Regnum Vegetabile") from the first edition of Systema Naturae (1735).

Scientific classification in botany is a method by which botanists group and categorize organisms by biological type, such as genus or species. Biological classification is a form of scientific taxonomy. Modern taxonomy is rooted in the work of Carolus Linnaeus, who grouped species according to shared physical characteristics. These groupings have since been revised to improve consistency with the Darwinian principle of common descent. While scientists do not always agree on how to classify organisms, molecular phylogenetics, which uses DNA sequences as data, has driven many recent revisions along more efficient, evolutionary lines and is likely to continue to do so. Botanical classification belongs to the science of plant systematics. The dominant classification system is called the Linnaean taxonomy. It includes ranks and binomial nomenclature. The classification, taxonomy, and nomenclature of botanical organisms is administered by the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN).[76][77]

The five-kingdom system has largely been superseded by modern alternative classification systems. Textbooks generally begin with the three-domain system: Archaea (originally Archaebacteria); Bacteria (originally Eubacteria); Eukaryota (including protists, fungi, plants, and animals). These domains reflect whether the cells have nuclei or not, as well as differences in the chemical composition of the cell exteriors and ribosomes.[77][78]

Further, each kingdom is broken down recursively until each species is separately classified. The order is: Domain; Kingdom; Phylum; Class; Order; Family; Genus; Species. The scientific name of an organism is generated from its genus and species, resulting in a single world-wide name for each organism.[77] For example, the Tiger Lily is listed as Lilium columbianum. Lilium is the genus, and columbianum the specific epithet. When writing the scientific name of an organism, it is proper to capitalize the first letter in the genus and put all of the specific epithet in lowercase. Additionally, the entire term is ordinarily italicized or underlined. Phylogenetics is the study of similarities among different species.[77][79][80]

Subdisciplines of botany

Notable botanists

Further information: List of botanists
Sculpture of Ibn al-Baitar among trees, Benalmádena, Málaga, Spain

The following botanists made major contributions to the ways in which botany has been studied.

  • Theophrastus (c. 371 – c. 287 BC), "The Father of Botany", established botanical science through his lecture notes, Enquiry into Plants.
  • Pedanius Dioscorides (c. 40–90 AD), Greek physician, pharmacologist, toxicologist and botanist, author of De Materia Medica (Regarding Medical Matters).
  • Abū Ḥanīfa Dīnawarī (828–896), Persian botanist, historian, geographer, astronomer, mathematician, and founder of Arabic botany.
  • Su Song (1020–1101), Chinese polymath, botanist, compiled the Bencao Tujing ('Illustrated Pharmacopoeia'), a treatise on pharmaceutical botany, zoology, and mineralogy.
  • Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati (c. 1200), Andalusian-Arab botanist and agricultural scientist, and a pioneer in experimental botany.
  • Ibn al-Baitar (1197–1248), Andalusian-Arab scientist, botanist, pharmacist, physician, and author of one of the largest botanical encyclopedias.
  • Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), Italian polymath; a scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, painter, sculptor, architect, botanist, musician and writer.
  • John Ray (1627–1705), English naturalist, botanist, and zoologist; father of natural history.
  • Augustus Quirinus Rivinus, German physician and botanist; introduced the concept of classifying plants based on the structure of their flower, which influenced de Tournefort and Linnaeus.
  • Joseph Pitton de Tournefort (1656–1708), French botanist; first to clearly define the concept of genus for plants.
  • Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), Swedish botanist, physician and zoologist who laid the foundations for the modern scheme of Binomial nomenclature; known as the father of modern taxonomy and also considered one of the fathers of modern ecology.
  • Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, (1744–1829), French naturalist, botanist, biologist, academic, and an early proponent of the idea that evolution occurred and proceeded in accordance with natural laws.
  • Aimé Bonpland (1773–1858), French explorer and botanist, who accompanied Alexander von Humboldt during five years of travel in Latin America.
  • Augustin Pyramus de Candolle (1778–1841), Swiss botanist, originated the idea of "Nature's war", which influenced Charles Darwin.
  • David Douglas (1799–1834), Scottish botanical explorer of North America and China, who imported many ornamental plants into Europe.
  • Richard Spruce (1817–1893), English botanist and explorer who carried out a detailed study of the Amazon flora.
  • Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817–1911), English botanist and explorer; second winner of Darwin Medal.
  • Gregor Johann Mendel (1822–1884), Austrian Augustinian priest and scientist, and is often called the father of genetics for his study of the inheritance of traits in pea plants.
  • Charles Sprague Sargent (1841–1927), American botanist, the first director of the Arnold Arboretum at Harvard University.
  • Agustín Stahl (1842–1917), Puerto Rican doctor, who conducted investigations and experiments in the fields of botany, ethnology, and zoology in the Caribbean region.
  • Luther Burbank (1849–1926), American botanist, horticulturist, and a pioneer in agricultural science.
  • George Ledyard Stebbins, Jr. (1906–2000), American widely regarded as one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century, developed a comprehensive synthesis of plant evolution incorporating genetics.
  • Norman Borlaug (1914-2009), American agronomist, known for breeding high yielding wheat varieties. Dubbed the "father of the green revolution"
  • Richard Evans Schultes (1915–2001), American botanist and explorer, known as "The Father of Ethnobotany", Linnean Society gold medal winner.

See also

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Main article: Outline of botany

Notes

  1. ^ Liddell & Scott 1940.
  2. ^ Gordh & Headrick 2001, p. 134.
  3. ^ Online Etymology Dictionary 2012.
  4. ^ Iyer 2009, p. 117.
  5. ^ Grene & Depew 2004, p. 11.
  6. ^ Mauseth 2003, p. 532.
  7. ^ Dallal 2010, p. 197.
  8. ^ Panaino 2002, p. 93.
  9. ^ Levey 1973, p. 116.
  10. ^ National Museum of Wales 2007.
  11. ^ Yaniv & Bachrach 2005, p. 157.
  12. ^ Sprague 1939.
  13. ^ Waggoner 2001.
  14. ^ Scharf 2009, pp. 73-117.
  15. ^ Scharf 2009, pp. 73-74.
  16. ^ Capon 2005, pp. 220–223.
  17. ^ Hoek, Mann & Jahns 2005, p. 9.
  18. ^ Ereshefsky 1997, pp. 493–519.
  19. ^ Gray & Sargent 1889, pp. 292–293.
  20. ^ Morton 1981, p. 377.
  21. ^ Harris 2000, pp. 76–81.
  22. ^ Devos & Gale 2000.
  23. ^ University of California-Davis 2012.
  24. ^ Ben-Menahem 2009, p. 5370.
  25. ^ Chase et al. 2003, pp. 399–436.
  26. ^ Capon 2005, p. 223.
  27. ^ Ben-Menahem 2009, p. 5368.
  28. ^ Chapman et al. 2001, p. 56.
  29. ^ Capon 2005, pp. 10–11.
  30. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 1–3.
  31. ^ Gust 1996.
  32. ^ Missouri Botanical Garden 2009.
  33. ^ Cleveland Museum of Natural History 2012.
  34. ^ Ben-Menahem 2009, pp. 5367–5368.
  35. ^ Butz 2007, pp. 534–553.
  36. ^ Floros, Newsome & Fisher 2010.
  37. ^ Schoening 2005.
  38. ^ Acharya & Anshu 2008, p. 440.
  39. ^ Ben-Menahem 2009, p. 5369.
  40. ^ Mann 1987, pp. 186–187.
  41. ^ University of Maryland Medical Center 2011.
  42. ^ Scharlemann & Laurance 2008, pp. 52–53.
  43. ^ Ben-Menahem 2009, pp. 5369–5370.
  44. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 786–818.
  45. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 819–848.
  46. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 468–501.
  47. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 502–527.
  48. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 552-581.
  49. ^ Copeland 1938, pp. 383-420.
  50. ^ Woese et al. 1977, pp. 305-311.
  51. ^ Cavalier-Smith 2004, pp. 1251-1262.
  52. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 582–616.
  53. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 617–654.
  54. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 655–681.
  55. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 682–719.
  56. ^ a b Mauseth 2003, pp. 720–750.
  57. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 751–785.
  58. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 278–279.
  59. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 280–314.
  60. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 315–340.
  61. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 341–372.
  62. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 373–398.
  63. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 399–432.
  64. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 433–467.
  65. ^ Raven, Evert & Eichhorn 2005, p. 9.
  66. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 50–58.
  67. ^ National Center for Biotechnology Information 2004.
  68. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 62–81.
  69. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 96–103.
  70. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 185–208.
  71. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 114–153.
  72. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 154–184.
  73. ^ Capon 2005, p. 11.
  74. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 209–243.
  75. ^ Mauseth 2003, pp. 244–277.
  76. ^ McNeill et al. 2006.
  77. ^ a b c d Mauseth 2003, pp. 528–551.
  78. ^ Woese, Kandler & Wheelis 1990, pp. 4576–4579.
  79. ^ International Association for Plant Taxonomy 2006.
  80. ^ Silyn-Roberts 2000, p. 198.

Bibliography

Web-based

Books & journals

Popular science

Academic and scientific

Environmental botany
  • Crawley, Michael J. (1997). Plant Ecology (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Ltd. ISBN 0-632-03639-7. 
  • Ennos, Roland; Sheffield, Elizabeth (2000). Plant Life. Oxford: Blackwell Scientific Ltd. ISBN 0-86542-737-2. 
  • Everitt; Lonard; Little, C. R. (2007). Weeds in South Texas and Northern Mexico. Lubbock, TX: Texas Tech University Press. ISBN 0-89672-614-2. 
  • Richards, P. W. (1996). The Tropical Rainforest (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-42194-2. 
  • Stace, Clive Anthony (1997). A New Flora of the British Isles (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-58935-5. 
Plant physiology
  • Bowsher, Caroline G.; Steer, M. W.; Tobin, A. K. (2008). Plant Biochemistry (2nd ed.). New York: Garland Science, Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0-8153-4121-0. 
  • Buchanan, Bob B.; Gruissem, Wilhelm; Jones, Russell L. (2000). Biochemistry & Molecular Biology of Plants. West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 0-943088-39-9. 
  • Fitter, Alastair H.; Hay, Robert K. M. (2001). Environmental Physiology of Plants (3rd ed.). New York: Harcourt Publishers, Academic Press. ISBN 0-12-257766-3. 
  • Lambers, Hans; Chapin III, Francis Stuart; Pons, Thijs Leendert (1998). Plant Physiological Ecology. New York: Springer Science. ISBN 0-387-98326-0. 
  • Lawlor, David W. (2000). Photosynthesis (3rd ed.). New York: Garland Science. ISBN 1-85996-157-6. 
  • Salisbury; Ross, Cleon W. (1992). Plant Physiology (4th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing. ISBN 0-534-15162-0. 
  • Taiz, Lincoln; Zeiger, Eduardo (1991). Plant Physiology. Redwood City, CA: Benjamin/Cummings Publishing. ISBN 0-8053-0245-X. 
    • Taiz, Lincoln; Zeiger, Eduardo (2002). Plant Physiology (3rd ed.). Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates. ISBN 0-87893-823-0. 
    • Taiz, Lincoln; Zeiger, Eduardo (2006). Plant Physiology (4th ed.). Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates. ISBN 0-87893-856-7. 
    • Taiz, Lincoln; Zeiger, Eduardor (2010). Plant Physiology (5th ed.). Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates. ISBN 0-87893-866-4. 

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Subdisciplines of Biology
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Hierarchy of Life
Foundations of Biology
Principles of Evolution
Principles of Ecology
Principles of Molecular Biology
Principles of Biochemistry
Glossaries
Botany
Subdisciplines of botany
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Plants
Plant parts
Plant cells
Plant reproduction
Plant taxonomy
Glossaries
Fields and disciplines
Theophrastus
Institutions
Publications
Historia Plantarum of Theophrastus and Causes of Plants c. 200 BC · Materia Medica c. 60 AD · Naturalis Historia 77-79 AD · Herbarum Vivae Icones 1530 · Libellus De Re Herbaria Novus 1538 · Kreutterbuch 1539 · Historia Plantarum of John Ray 1561-1563 · De Plantis 1583 · Stirpium Historiae 1583 · Prodromus Theatrici Botanici 1620 · Pinax 1623 · Anatome Plantarum 1675 · Anatomy of Plants 1682 · Historia Plantarum 1682–1704 · De Sexu Plantarum Epistola 1694 · Vegetable Staticks 1727 · Systema Naturae 1735 · Genera Plantarum 1737 · Philosophia Botanica 1751 · Species Plantarum 1753 · Familles des Plantes 1763-4 · Experiments Upon Vegetables 1779 · Die Metamorphose der Pflantzen 1790 · Traité d'Anatomie et de Physiologie Végétale 1802 · Recherches Chimiques sur la Végétation 1804 · Beyträge zur Anatomie der Pflanzen 1812 · Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis 1824-1841 · Die Vegetabilische Zelle 1851 · Vergleichende Untersuchungen 1851 · On the Origin of Species 1859 · Experiments on Plant Hybridization 1862 · Die Vegetation der Erde 1872 · Prodromus Systematis Naturalis Regni Vegetabilis 1873 · Plantesamfund 1895 · Pflanzengeographie auf Physiologischer Grundlage 1898 · Variation and Evolution in Plants 1950 · Ontogeny and Phylogeny 1977 · An Integrated System of Classification of Flowering Plants 1981
Theories and concepts
Influential figures
Theophrastus c. 371 – c. 287 BC · Pliny the Elder 23–79 AD · Pedanius Dioscorides c. 40-90 AD · Otto Brunfels 1464-1534 · Hieronymus Bock 1498-1554 · Valerius Cordus 1515-1544 · William Turner 1515-1568 · Rembert Dodoens 1517-1585 · Andrea Cesalpino 1519-1603 · Gaspard Bauhin 1560–1624 · Joachim Jungius 1587–1657 · John Ray 1623–1705 · Nehemiah Grew 1628–1711 · Marcello Malpighi 1628–1694 · Joseph Pitton de Tournefort 1656–1708 · Rudolf Jakob Camerarius 1665–1721 · Stephen Hales 1677–1761 · Bernard de Jussieu 1699–1777 · Carolus Linnaeus 1707–1778 · Michel Adanson 1727–1806 · Jan Ingenhousz 1730–1799 · Joseph Banks 1743–1820 · Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 1749–1832 · Carl Ludwig Willdenow 1765–1812 · Nicolas-Théodore de Saussure 1767–1845 · Alexander von Humboldt 1769–1859 · Aimé Bonpland 1773–1858 · Thomas Nuttall 1786–1859 · Joakim Frederik Schouw 1789–1852 · Matthias Jakob Schleiden 1804–1881 · Alexander Braun 1805–1877 · George Engelmann 1809–1884 · Asa Gray 1810–1888 · August Grisebach 1814–1879 · Joseph Hooker 1817–1911 · Gregor Mendel 1822–1884 · Nathanael Pringsheim 1823–1894 · Wilhelm Hofmeister 1824–1877 · Julius von Sachs 1832–1897 · Eugenius Warming 1841–1924 · William Gilson Farlow 1844–1919 · Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper 1856–1901 · Nikolai Vavilov 1887–1943 · G. Ledyard Stebbins 1906–2000 · Eugene Odum 1913–2002 · Arthur Cronquist 1919–1992
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Translations:

Botany

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Dansk (Danish)
n. - botanik

n. - kamgarn, merinould

Nederlands (Dutch)
botanie, plantkunde

Français (French)
n. - botanique

n. - laine mérinos (d'Australie)

Deutsch (German)
n. - Botanik, Pflanzenkunde

n. - Merino Wolle (vor allem Australien)

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - βοτανική, φυτολογία

Italiano (Italian)
botanica

Português (Portuguese)
n. - botânica (f)

Русский (Russian)
ботаника

Español (Spanish)
n. - botánica

n. - lana merina de Australia

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - botanik

中文（简体）(Chinese (Simplified))
植物学

植物学

中文（繁體）(Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 植物學

n. - 植物學

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 식물학, 전체 식물

n. - 오스트레일리아 산의 최고급 메리노 양모

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 植物学, 一地域の植物, 一地域の植物の生態

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) علم النبات‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮תורת הצומח, בוטניקה‬
n. - ‮צמר של כבשי מרינו, בייחוד מאוסטרליה‬

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