Because in early
times the study of plant life dealt mainly with plants as food. It became known
as botany, from a Greek word meaning “herb”. 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 started to observe plants and write books about their observations.
These writers were the father 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. “Palebotany”,
is another branch, works out plant evolution from the evidence of fossil
remains.
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