vegetation, flora, botany (noun)

all the plant life in a particular region or period

"Pleistocene vegetation"; "the flora of southern California"; "the botany of China"

botany, phytology (noun)

the branch of biology that studies plants

botany (Noun)

The scientific study of plants, a branch of biology. Typically those disciplines that involve the whole plant.

botany (Noun)

The plant life, or the properties and life phenomena exhibited by a plant, plant type, or plant group.

botany (Noun)

A botanical treatise or study, especially of a particular system of botany or that of a particular place.

Botany

Botany, plant science, or plant biology, is a discipline of biology and the science of plant life. Traditionally, the science of botany included the study of fungi, algae, and viruses, but this has become less common. A person engaged in the study of botany is called a botanist. Botany began with early efforts to identify edible, medicinal and poisonous plants, making it one of the oldest branches of science. Nowadays, botanists study about 400,000 species of living organisms. The beginnings of modern-style classification systems can be traced to the 1500s–1600s when several attempts were made to classify plants scientifically. In the 19th and 20th centuries, major new techniques were developed for studying plants, including microscopy and analysis of plant chemistry and plant anatomy. In the last two decades of the 20th century, analysis of DNA sequences began to be used to classify plants more accurately, culminating in the APG III system, a molecular system of plant taxonomy that was published in 2009 by the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group. Modern botanical research covers very diverse topics and is increasingly multidisciplinary, integrating strongly with other scientific disciplines such as chemistry, physics and bioinformatics. It includes, for example, the study of paleobotany, plant evolution and speciation, plant diversity, plant ecology, plant anatomy, plant cell biology, cell signaling, plant biochemistry, plant physiology, plant taxonomy and plant systematics, molecular genetics, genomics, proteomics, epigenetics, evolutionary developmental biology, systems biology, plant tissue culture and biotechnology. Scientific disciplines in applied plant science include agronomy, forestry and horticulture, all of which owe much to the discipline of soil science. Key scientists in the history of botany include Theophrastus, Ibn al-Baitar, Carl Linnaeus, Gregor Mendel, Charles Darwin, Joseph Dalton Hooker, William Hooker, Albert Francis Blakeslee, G. Ledyard Stebbins, Arthur Cronquist, Robert Brown, Arthur Tansley and many of those plant explorers whose names are immortalized in the generic or specific names of plants, such as Joseph Banks, John Tradescant the elder, John Tradescant the younger, Joel Roberts Poinsett and George Forrest.

Botany

Botany, also called plant science(s), 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 specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek word βοτάνη (botanē) meaning "pasture", "herbs" "grass", or "fodder"; βοτάνη is in turn derived from βόσκειν (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 strict 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 approximately 20,000 are bryophytes.Botany originated in prehistory as herbalism with the efforts of early humans to identify – and later cultivate – plants that were edible, poisonous, and possibly medicinal, making it one 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 to this day for the naming of all biological 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 function 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 and forestry, plant propagation, breeding and genetic modification, in the synthesis of chemicals and raw materials for construction and energy production, in environmental management, and the maintenance of biodiversity.