Botany is a word from Greek language. It
means “herb”. The word botany as a study regarding plants was used mainly because
in early times the study of plant life dealt mainly with plants as
Food.
According to Brittanica, Botany is a branch
of biology that deals with the study of plants, including their structure,
properties, and biochemical processes. Also included are plant classification
and the study of plant diseases and of interactions with the environment. The
principles and findings of botany have provided the base for such applied
sciences as agriculture, horticulture, and forestry.
The first people to specialize in the
study of botany were primitive medicine men and witch doctors. They had to know
the plants that could kill or cure people. And botany was closely linked with
medicine for hundreds of years.
In the sixteenth century, people began
to observe plants and write books about their observations. These writers were
the "fathers of modern botany. In the nineteenth century, the work of an
English scientist, Charles Darwin, helped botanists gain a better understanding
of how plants, as well as animals, evolved from simpler ancestors.
His work led botanists to set up special
branches of botany. One of these branches is "plant anatomy", which
has to do with the structure of plants and how they might be related.
Experiments on plant heredity were performed to find out how various species
came to be and how they could be improved. This study is called
"genetics".
"Ecology", another branch of
botany, deals with studies of the distribution of plants throughout the world,
to find out why certain species grow in certain places.
"Paleobotany", another branch, works
out plant evolution from the evidence of
fossil remains.
Other branches of botany include
"plant physiology", which studies the way plants breathe and make
food, and plant pathology", which is concerned with the study of plant
diseases.
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