Botany

 Botany, also called plant science, plant biology, or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. A botanist, plant scientist, or phytologist is a scientist who specializes in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek botane meaning "pastures," "herbs," "grass," or "fodder;" botane is in turn derived from boskein, "to feed" or "to graze." Traditionally, botany has also included the study of fungi and algae by mycologists and phycologists respectively, with the study of these three groups of organisms remaining within the sphere of interest of the International Botanical Congress. Nowadays, botanists (in the strictest sense) study approximately 410,000 species of land plants of which some 391,000 species are vascular plants (including approximately 369,000 species of flowering plants), and approximate 20,000 are bryophytes.

Botany originated in prehistory as herbalism with efforts of early humans to identify -- and later cultivate -- plants that were edible, poisonous, and possibly medicinal, making it ome of the first endeavors of human investigation. Medieval physic gardens, often attached to monasteries, contained plants possibly having medicinal benefit. They were forerunners of the first botanical gardens attached to universities, founded from the 1540s onwards. One of the earliest was the Padua botanical garden. These gardens facilitated the academic study of plants. Efforts to catalogue and describe their collections were the beginnings of plant taxonomy, and led in 1753 to the binomial system of nomenclature of Carl Linnaeus that remains in use today for the naming of all billogical species.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, new techniques were developed for the study of plants, including methods of optical microscopy and live cell imaging, electron microscopy, analysis of chromosome number, plant chemistry, and the structure and functions of enzymes and other proteins. In the last two decades of the 20th century, botanists exploited the techniques of molecular genetic analysis, including genomics and proteomics and DNA sequences to classify plants more accurately.

Modern botany is a broad, multidisciplinary subject with contributions and insights from most other areas of science and technology. Research topics include the study of plant structure, growth and differentiation, reproduction, biochemistry and primary metabolism, chemical products, development, diseases, evolutionary relationships, systematics, and plant taxonomy. Dominant themes in 21st century plant science are molecular genetics and epigenetics, which study the mechanisms and control of gene expression during differentiation of plant cells and tissues. Botanical research has diverse applications in providing staple foods, materials such as timber, oil, rubber, fibre and drugs, in modern horticulture, agriculture, forestry, plant propagation, breeding and genetic manipulation, in the synthesis of chemicals and materials for construction and energy production, in environmental management, and the maintenance of biodiversity.

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