Botany Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Botany i s the study of plants. Botanists study all aspects of plants, including their environment and how they grow. It is closely associated with agriculture, horticulture, and pharmacology. Botany is one of the oldest of sciences. From early human history, people have gathered plants for medicine or food. Folklore in the earliest of human societies was passed on for generations. Medicine men or women practiced the development of remedies for diseases and injuries, as well as intoxicants. With the development of farming about 12,000 years ago, horticultural plant knowledge also began to move toward a body of knowledge. Ancient civilizations of the Egyptians, Indians, and Babylonians coined names for the plants they knew. The Greeks added descriptions to plant names. Aristotle, his student Theophrastus (An Inquiry into Plants), and Galen the physician gave descriptions to the names. Aristotle sought for the unique form or idea that is found in each plant. This basis would eventually aid the development of taxonomy of plants.

There are hundreds of thousands of plants around the world. They vary widely, even when related. Because of this variation, it was necessary to develop a standardized nomenclature to aid a precise science. Latin, the language of scholarship until the 20th century, was used for the taxonomy to assign a universal name to plants with different common names or national names in the many European languages. The use of Latin, a dead language, prevents changes in names that would occur in a living language, thereby creating lasting scientific precision. The scientific naming has a fixed pattern in which the first name identifies the genus to which a plant belongs. The second name is the species name, which denominates precisely in which one of the subgroups it is a member. Each genus is a unique class with each of its species also a unique group. The commonly named orange tree has a scientific name of Citrus sinensis, of which naval and Valencia oranges are varieties. Field guides for a particular region may include common names to aid in identification.

Other features of plants not only aid it identification and naming, but also are studied in order to understand the nature and possible uses of plants. These features of plants studied by botanists include plant physiology, cytology and histology; morphology; genetics; pathology; plant ecology; and economic botany.

Physiology in botany is the study of plant survival activities, such as how plants make and use food, how the cells of a plant enable it to grow, how the plant reproduces, and how the plant is influenced by heat, light, and moisture. The way that plants metabolize materials as food in order to grow is a central part of botany. For example, trees breathe in carbon dioxide and exhale oxygen, which in turn is breathed by humans and animals. Photosynthesis is the process used by plants to make green chlorophyll, which animals and humans eat.

Botanists also study how plants make chemicals. Alfalfa, clover, peanuts, and other plants produce nitrogen compounds that aid plant growth and ultimately also fertilize the soil. Their symbiotic relationship with Rhizobia bacteria are similar to other types of symbiotic relationships plants have. Histology is the study of the different kinds of cells and how they are arranged in different plants, and cytology focuses on the specific nature of plant cells.

Plants range from single-cell, very complex arrangements of cells into soft green leaves, seaweed, or into very hard tropical trees like mahogany. Cytology and histology are subdisciplines of plant morphology, which is the study of the form and structure of plants. Morphology is organized around the taxonomy of plants. This part of botany seeks to understand how a plant grows and lives. The goal is to place new plants into an organized taxonomy.

Plant genetics focuses on the laws of genetic reproduction to describe how plants transmit their characteristics to their offspring. Many gardeners seek to breed a rose that may be an ideal beauty, or a flower with a new color or some other characteristic. University botanists may be seeking to selectively breed a more productive type of tomato or corn plant using genetic knowledge of each plant

Plant pathology has a number of causes. The most damaging pathogens are viruses, bacteria, fungi, and molds. Other causes may be exhaustion of the soil or weather. Plant pathogens may also be toxic to humans if the infected plants are eaten. To prevent crop loss, plant pathology includes the study of ways to fight or prevent plant diseases. Genetics may be used to develop strains of plants resistant to infection, or medicinal fungicides or other treatments may be used. Some botanists seek to apply their knowledge to all segments of agriculture. They specialize in making rapid, accurate, and scientifically sound diagnoses and management strategies for all types of plant health problems.

Plant ecology studies the relationship between plants and their spatial location. Also important to plant ecology are studies of how plants grow (or do not grow) together in different climates or regions such as mountains, deserts, swamps, seashores, river bottoms, or under the sea. Knowledge of plant ecology can be very helpful in aiding recovery of the natural health of an area. For example, the nutria (Myocastor coypus), a large fur-bearing rodent that has become an invasive species in Louisiana, Maryland, and elsewhere, destroy wide areas of marshland by eating the roots of marsh grasses. Promoting the marsh grass recovery is important, because the marshes are vital sea life breeding areas.

Economic botany is the application of botanical knowledge. It involves research to adapt plants to human use for food, fertilizer, medicine, or for other benefits such as grass on golf courses. It also seeks to develop practical knowledge of all aspects of plants. Botany is also related to many other sciences such as soil science, chemistry, geography, mathematics, and physics. All the sciences and businesses that use botanical knowledge benefit from pure botanical research.

Bibliography:

L. Bonnet and G.D. Keen, Botany: 49 Science Fair Projects (Tab Books, 1989);
T.J. Elpel, Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification (HOPS Press, LLC, 2004);
W.H. Lewis, Medical Botany: Plants Affecting Man’s Health (John Wiley & Sons, 1977);
Randy Moore, Botany (Wm. Brown, 1995);
Murray Nabors, Introduction to Botany (Benjamin Cummings, 2003);
William Stearn, Botanical Latin (Timber Press, , 2004);
M. Van de Graff and J.L. Crawley, Photographic Atlas for the Botany Laboratory (Morton Publishing Company, 2004).