Botany
From ArticleWorld
Botany is the scientific study of the growth, reproduction, metabolism, development, diseases, ecology and evolution of plants. Botany is only a branch of biology and sometimes is referred to as plant science(s) of plant biology. Botanist must be concerned with classification (taxonomy), structure (anatomy), and function (physiology) of plant life.
Importance of botany
Plants are essential to life on earth. Plants produce oxygen, food fibers, fuel and medicine that help higher life forms to exist. Plants also absorb carbon dioxide, which is a significant greenhouse gas, through photosynthesis.
Understanding plants
To understand plants will be beneficial to the future of human beings.
- Plants help feed the world practically all the food we eat comes from plants, either directly from fundamental products, not to mention, other fruit and vegetables or indirectly through livestock which rely on plants for food.
- Plants help human beings understand the fundamental life processes. We can use plants to study life processes like cell and protein synthesis without harming animals or humans.
- Plants help human beings utilize medicine and materials. A lot of our medicinal and recreational drugs, like cannabis, caffeine and nicton come directly from the plant kingdom.
- Plants help us understand environmental changes in various ways.
To understand habitat destruction and species extinction we must first have an accurate and complete catalogue of plant systematics and taxonomy.
- Plants can help us monitor problems like the ozone depletion because of plants responses to ultra-violent radiation.
- Pollen deposited from plants thousand or millions of years ago can help scientist reconstruct past climates and predict future ones.
- Scientist record and analyze the timing of plant life cycles as part of phenology used in climate change research.
- Lichens, a type of plant and sensitive to atmospheric conditions have been used considerably as pollution indicators.
History of botany
Early botany is considered before 1945. The earliest botanical works, written around 300 B.C., are On the causes of plants and One the History of Plants (Historia Plantarum) both written by Theophrastus. These books are important to the contribution of botanical science through antiquity and into the middle ages. Modern botany is considered after 1945. The new knowledge is being caused by studying plants like Arabidopsis thaliana. Historically botany covers all organisms that are not to be animals like
- fungi-studied in mycology
- bacteria-studied in microbiology
- algae-studied in phycology