Home > Botany
2 History
2.1 Early botany
Among the earliest of botanical works, written around 300 BC, are two large treatises by Theophrastus: On the History of Plants ( Historia Plantarum) and On the Causes of Plants. Together these books constitute the most important contribution to botanical science during antiquity and on into the Middle Ages. The Roman medical writer, Dioscorides, provides important evidence on Greek and Roman knowledge of officinal plants.
In 1665, using an early microscope, Robert Hooke discovered cells in cork; a short time later in living plant tissue. The German Leonhart Fuchs, the Swiss Conrad Gessner, and the British authors Nicholas Culpeper and John Gerard, published herbals that gave information on the officinal uses of plants.
2.2 Modern botany
A considerable amount of new knowledge today is being generated from studying model plants like Arabidopsis thaliana. This mustard weed was one of the first plants to have its genome sequenced. Other more commercially important plants like rice, wheat, maize and soybean are also having their genomes sequenced, although some of these are more challenging because they have more than one copy of their chromosomes, a condition known as polyploidy. The "Green Yeast" Chlamydomonas reinhardtii (a single-celled, green alga) is another plant model organism that has been extensively studied and provided important insights into cell biology.
3 See also
- Biology
- Agriculture, horticulture, forestry and soil science
- Ethnobotany, paleobotany and dendrochronology
- Plants, trees, fruit, and vegetables
- Herbs and spices
- Seeds, germination and stratification.
- List of vegetables, list of flowers, list of domesticated plants
- List of botanists and list of botanical gardens
- Botany Bay
- List of plant science research institutions
- Important publications in botany
- List of major natural Plant Species in the UK, described in the National Vegetation Classification ]
4 Bibliography
- Peter H. Raven, Ray F. Evert, Susan E. Eichhorn: Biology of Plants, Freeman. BooksEnthsiast.com - A first year undergraduate level textbook
- James D. Mauseth: Botany : an introduction to plant biology. Jones and Bartlett Publishers, BooksEnthsiast.com - A first year undergraduate level textbook
- David Bellamy Bellamy on Botany, BooksEnthsiast.com an accessible and short introduction to various botanical subjects
- Roland Ennos and Elizabeth Sheffield Plant life, Blackwell Science, BooksEnthsiast.com Introduction to plant biodiversity
- Michael Pollan The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-eye View of the World Bloomsbury BooksEnthsiast.com Account of the co-evolution of plants and humans
