Learning Module in ELECTIVE 9 – BOTANY

WEEK 1 INTRODUCTION TO BOTANY

OVERVIEW

This module introduces you to plant kingdom, what it is, how it developed, how it relates to our
everyday lives, and what is potential is for the future. It includes a brief discussion on its history, branches,
and application. It also tackles the basic unit of life, cell, particularly the plant cell,its structure, parts and
function.

OBJECTIVES

 Discuss the science of botany,and its history .

 Analyze the applications of botany.

DISCUSSION

Botany, branch of biology that deals with the study of plants, including their structure, properties, and
biochemical processes. Also included are plant classification and the study of plant diseases and of
interactions with the environment. The principles and findings of botany have provided the base for such
applied sciences as agriculture, horticulture, and forestry.

botany; carbon sequestration. Discover how the collaboration between the diverse fields of accounting
and botany is leading to a better understanding of carbon sequestration by trees.© University of Melbourne,
Victoria, Australia (A Britannica Publishing Partner)
Plants were of paramount importance to early humans, who depended upon them as sources of food,
shelter, clothing, medicine, ornament, tools, and magic. Today it is known that, in addition to their practical
and economic values, green plants are indispensable to all life on Earth: through the process
of photosynthesis, plants transform energy from the Sun into the chemical energy of food, which makes all
life possible. A second unique and important capacity of green plants is the formation and release
of oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis. The oxygen of the atmosphere, so absolutely essential to
many forms of life, represents the accumulation of over 3,500,000,000 years of photosynthesis by green
plants and algae.

Although the many steps in the process of photosynthesis have become fully understood only in recent
years, even in prehistoric times humans somehow recognized intuitively that some important relation

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existed between the Sun and plants. Such recognition is suggested by the fact that worship of the Sun was
often combined with the worship of plants by early tribes and civilizations.

Earliest humans, like the other anthropoid mammals (e.g., apes, monkeys), depended totally upon the
natural resources of the environment, which, until methods were developed for hunting, consisted almost
completely of plants. The behaviour of pre-Stone Age humans can be inferred by studying the botany of
aboriginal peoples in various parts of the world. Isolated tribal groups in South America, Africa, and New
Guinea, for example, have extensive knowledge about plants and distinguish hundreds of kinds according
to their utility, as edible, poisonous, or otherwise important in their culture. They have developed
sophisticated systems of nomenclature and classification, which approximate the binomial system (i.e.,
generic and specific names) found in modern biology. The urge to recognize different kinds of plants and to
give them names thus seems to be as old as the human race.
In time plants were not only collected but also grown by humans. This domestication resulted not only in
the development of agriculture but also in a greater stability of human populations that had previously been
nomadic. From the settling down of agricultural peoples in places where they could depend upon adequate
food supplies came the first villages and the earliest civilizations.
Because of the long preoccupation of humans with plants, a large body of folklore, general information, and
actual scientific data has accumulated, which has become the basis for the science of botany.
Historical Background

Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher who first studied with Plato and then became a disciple of Aristotle, is
credited with founding botany. Only two of an estimated 200 botanical treatises written by him are known to
science: originally written in Greek about 300 BCE, they have survived in the form of Latin manuscripts, De
causis plantarum and De historia plantarum. His basic concepts of morphology, classification, and
the natural history of plants, accepted without question for many centuries, are now of interest primarily
because of Theophrastus’s independent and philosophical viewpoint.

botanical illustration Illustration of an aster

(Silene linoides) in the 6th-century codex of the De materia medica of Pedanius DioscoridesGraphis
Magazine, Graphis Press Corp., Zurich
TheophrastusTheophrastus, statue in the Botanic Garden, Palermo, Italy.Esculapio
Pedanius Dioscorides, a Greek botanist of the 1st century CE, was the most important botanical writer
after Theophrastus. In his major work, an herbal in Greek, he described some 600 kinds of plants, with
comments on their habit of growth and form as well as on their medicinal properties. Unlike Theophrastus,
who classified plants as trees, shrubs, and herbs, Dioscorides grouped his plants under three headings: as
aromatic, culinary, and medicinal. His herbal, unique in that it was the first treatment of medicinal plants to
be illustrated, remained for about 15 centuries the last word on medical botany in Europe.

From the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE, a succession of Roman writers—Cato the
Elder, Varro, Virgil, and Columella—prepared Latin manuscripts on farming, gardening, and fruit growing
but showed little evidence of the spirit of scientific inquiry for its own sake that was so characteristic of
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Theophrastus. In the 1st century CE, Pliny the Elder, though no more original than his Roman
predecessors, seemed more industrious as a compiler. His Historia naturalis—an encyclopaedia of 37
volumes, compiled from some 2,000 works representing 146 Roman and 327 Greek authors—has 16
volumes devoted to plants. Although uncritical and containing much misinformation, this work contains
much information otherwise unavailable, since most of the volumes to which he referred have been
destroyed.

The printing press revolutionized the availability of all types of literature, including that of plants. In the 15th
and 16th centuries, many herbals were published with the purpose of describing plants useful in medicine.
Written by physicians and medically oriented botanists, the earliest herbals were based largely on the work
of Dioscorides and to a lesser extent on Theophrastus, but gradually they became the product of original
observation. The increasing objectivity and originality of herbals through the decades is clearly reflected in
the improved quality of the woodcuts prepared to illustrate these books.

In 1552 an illustrated manuscript on Mexican plants, written in Aztec, was translated into Latin by Badianus;
other similar manuscripts known to have existed seem to have disappeared. Whereas herbals in China
date back much further than those in Europe, they have become known only recently and so have
contributed little to the progress of Western botany.

The invention of the optical lens during the 16th century and the development of
the compound microscope about 1590 opened an era of rich discovery about plants; prior to that time, all
observations by necessity had been made with the unaided eye. The botanists of the 17th century turned
away from the earlier emphasis on medical botany and began to describe all plants, including the many
new ones that were being introduced in large numbers from Asia, Africa, and America. Among the most
prominent botanists of this era was Gaspard Bauhin, who for the first time developed, in a tentative way,
many botanical concepts still held as valid.

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Gaspard BauhinGaspard Bauhin, detail from an engraving.Courtesy of the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
In 1665 Robert Hooke published, under the title Micrographia, the results of his microscopic observations
on several plant tissues. He is remembered as the coiner of the word “cell,” referring to the cavities he
observed in thin slices of cork; his observation that living cells contain sapand other materials too often has
been forgotten. In the following decade, Nehemiah Grew and Marcello Malpighifounded plant anatomy; in
1671 they communicated the results of microscopic studies simultaneously to the Royal Society of London,
and both later published major treatises.

Robert Hooke's drawings Robert Hooke's drawings of the cellular structure of cork and a sprig of
sensitive plant from Micrographia (1665).From Micrographia, by Robert Hooke, 1665
Nehemiah GrewNehemiah Grew, detail from an engraving. An English botanist, physician, and
microscopist, Grew is considered one of the founders of the field of plant anatomy.BBC Hulton Picture
Library
Marcello MalpighiMarcello Malpighi, engraving from an oil painting by A.M. Tobar.
Experimental plant physiology began with the brilliant work of Stephen Hales, who published his
observations on the movements of water in plants under the title Vegetable Staticks (1727). His
conclusions on the mechanics of water transpiration in plants are still valid, as is his discovery—at the time
a startling one—that air contributes something to the materials produced by plants. In 1774, Joseph
Priestley showed that plants exposed to sunlight give off oxygen, and Jan Ingenhousz demonstrated, in
1779, that plants in the dark give off carbon dioxide. In 1804 Nicolas de Saussure demonstrated
convincingly that plants in sunlight absorb water and carbon dioxide and increase in weight, as had been
reported by Hales nearly a century earlier.

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Stephen Hales. Stephen Hales, detail of an oil painting by the studio of T. Hudson, c. 1759; in the National
Portrait Gallery, London.Courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London
The widespread use of the microscope by plant morphologists provided a turning point in the 18th century
—botany became largely a laboratory science. Until the invention of simple lenses and the compound
microscope, the recognition and classification of plants were, for the most part, based on such large
morphological aspects of the plant as size, shape, and external structure of leaves, roots, and stems. Such
information was also supplemented by observations on more subjective qualities of plants, such as edibility
and medicinal uses.

In 1753 Linnaeus published his master work, Species Plantarum, which contains careful descriptions of

6,000 species of plants from all of the parts of the world known at the time. In this work, which is still the
basic reference work for modern plant taxonomy, Linnaeus established the practice of binomial
nomenclature—that is, the denomination of each kind of plant by two words, the genus name and the
specific name, as Rosa canina, the dog rose. Binomial nomenclature had been introduced much earlier by
some of the herbalists, but it was not generally accepted; most botanists continued to use cumbersome
formal descriptions, consisting of many words, to name a plant. Linnaeus for the first time put the
contemporary knowledge of plants into an orderly system, with full acknowledgment to past authors, and
produced a nomenclatural methodology so useful that it has not been greatly improved upon. Linnaeus also
introduced a “sexual system” of plants, by which the numbers of flower parts—especially stamens, which
produce male sex cells, and styles, which are prolongations of plant ovaries that receive pollen grains—
became useful tools for easy identification of plants. This simple system, though effective, had many
imperfections. Other classification systems, in which as many characters as possible were considered in
order to determine the degree of relationship, were developed by other botanists; indeed, some appeared
before the time of Linnaeus. The application of the concepts of Charles Darwin (on evolution) and Gregor
Mendel(on genetics) to plant taxonomy has provided insights into the process of evolution and the
production of new species.

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Carolus LinnaeusCarolus Linnaeus, detail of a portrait by Alexander Roslin, 1775; in the Svenska
Porträttarkivet, Stockholm.Courtesy of the Svenska Porträttarkivet, Stockholm
Species PlantarumTitle page of Species Plantarum (1753) by Carolus Linnaeus.Special Collections,
National Agricultural Library
Systematic botany now uses information and techniques from all the subdisciplines of botany, incorporating
them into one body of knowledge. Phytogeography (the biogeography of plants),
plant ecology, population genetics, and various techniques applicable to cells—cytotaxonomy and
cytogenetics—have contributed greatly to the current status of systematic botany and have to some degree
become part of it. More recently, phytochemistry, computerized statistics, and fine-
structure morphology have been added to the activities of systematic botany.

The 20th century saw an enormous increase in the rate of growth of research in botany and the results
derived therefrom. The combination of more botanists, better facilities, and new technologies, all with the
benefit of experience from the past, resulted in a series of new discoveries, new concepts, and new fields
of botanical endeavour. Some important examples are mentioned below.

New and more precise information is being accumulated concerning the process of photosynthesis,
especially with reference to energy-transfer mechanisms.

The discovery of the pigment phytochrome, which constitutes a previously unknown light-detecting system

in plants, has greatly increased knowledge of the influence of both internal and external environment on
the germinationof seeds and the time of flowering.

Several types of plant hormones (internal regulatory substances) have been discovered—among
them auxin, gibberellin, and kinetin—whose interactions provide a new concept of the way in which the
plant functions as a unit.

The discovery that plants need certain trace elements usually found in the soil has made it possible
to cultivate areas lacking some essential element by adding it to the deficient soil.

The development of genetical methods for the control of plant heredity has made possible the generation of
improved and enormously productive crop plants.

The development of radioactive-carbon dating of plant materials as old as 50,000 years is useful to the
paleobotanist, the ecologist, the archaeologist, and especially to the climatologist, who now has a better
basis on which to predict climates of future centuries.

The discovery of alga-like and bacteria-like fossils in Precambrian rocks has pushed the estimated origin of
plants on Earth to 3,500,000,000 years ago.

The isolation of antibiotic substances from fungi and bacteria-like organisms has provided control over
many bacterial diseases and has contributed biochemical information of basic scientific importance as well.

The use of phylogenetic data to establish a consensus on the taxonomy and evolutionary lineages
of angiosperms(flowering plants) is coordinated through an international effort known as the Angiosperm.
Top 7 Applications of Plant Anatomy | Botany

The following points highlight the top seven applications of plant anatomy. The applications are: 1. Enables
to Identify Fragmentary Plant Materials 2. Enables to Detect Adulterants in Crude Drugs 3. Enables to
Identify Wood 4. Enables to Identify Archaeological Plant Remains 5. Applied Aspects of Meristem Culture
6. Provides Evidences in Forensic Investigation 7. Provides Characters of Taxonomic Significance.

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Application # 1. Enables to Identify Fragmentary Plant Materials:

Since the time of Linnaeus flowers and fruits provided the characters of identification. Sometimes situation
arises where these characters are not available.
Fragments of herbarium specimens, leaf, dried and powdered medicinal plants etc. The prerequisite of any
botanical research is the proper identification of the specimen.
Anyone dealing with plants for food, furniture, building materials, medicine etc. the plant breeders,
geneticists and cytologists must have proper identifying characters of their source materials. These
characters will identify parallel specimens, if required. They will be in a position to verify whether the
parallel specimen is from the same species of the source material.
The characters that differentiate a species from other species are considered as of taxonomic significance.
Apart from vegetative and reproductive organs plant anatomy provides characters that are of taxonomic
significance.
Trichome anatomy, wood and leaf anatomy, leaf epidermis and cuticle etc. provide valuable characters in
differentiation between species. As for example the different species of Rhododendron and Ficus can be
differentiated by means of trichome characters.
Application # 2. Enables to Detect Adulterants in Crude Drugs:

The medicinal plants provide the crude drug. Drug can be obtained from all parts of a plant (ex. Swertia
chirata), leaves (ex. Adhatoda vasica, Andrographis paniculata etc.), roots (Cephaelis ipecacuanha),
rhizome (ex. Zingiber officinale, Rauwolfia serpentina etc.), or bark (Alstonia scholaris). The crude drugs
are imported in dry form and in some cases in dry powdered form.
In this condition it becomes difficult to identify the materials by macroscopic appearance only. For this
reason the microscopical along with morphological characters of drug materials are studied. They are
described and published in pharmacopoeia. The pharmacopoeias may be of official publications.

Application # 3. Enables to Identify Wood:

The anatomy of a wood sample reveals many characters that help in the identification of plant from which
the wood comes. In each country there are several excellent books on wood anatomy. These books
provide not only anatomical description of wood of the plants occurring at the particular part of the world,
but also give the salient anatomical features that help in the identification of plants.
In India there are several volumes of book written on wood anatomy. Mention may be made of Indian
woods, published by the Manager of Publications, Government of India, Delhi. In these volumes the
anatomical description of woods, mostly from Indian origin, are given and the identifying characters are also
mentioned.
In India the number of timbers available in large quantities is not more than sixty, among which the
following three are most important-Tectona grandis (teak), Shorea robusta (sal) and Cedrus deodara
Application # 4. Enables to Identify Archaeological Plant Remains:
The wood-anatomy of present- day-plant provides characters to identify the fragmentary wood. These
characters also enable to identify the wood and charcoal preserved in sites from antiquity.
A burnt wood or charcoal sample is collected from the site of excavation. Microscopic slides are prepared
and examined thoroughly. The observation shows that the very delicate features like perforation plate and
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lateral wall pitting are still retained. The wood anatomy of archaeological sample is compared with that of
present-day-wood and thus their identity can be detected.
After authentication it can be decided whether it was selected for burning purpose only. It may happen that
the plants composed the vegetation of that area at that time. The plants, as they grew locally, were
obtainable at ease and so were selected for burning purposes.
A wood is best preserved in those localities where continuous wet or dry conditions prevail. A fluctuating
dry and wet atmosphere encourages the growth of pathogenic microorganisms that may attack the wood
thus causing the wood to decay. It is not yet definitely known when the first use of wood began. It is
assumed that the practice of using wood started in Old Stone Age for digging purposes in search of food.
For the first time, actual evidences of using wood have been recorded from the sites of New Stone Age. But
no sites at this age in India produce any evidence of the use of wood. The Indus Valley civilization revealed
the uses of wood for many purposes. The different use of wood was also recorded from the archaeological
excavation of the proto-historic period in India namely, the Bronze Age civilization of Harappa and the
Copper Age civilization of Hastinapura.
It has been reported that the Harappans used the wood of Cedrus deodara (Deodar) and Dalbergia latifolia
(Rosewood) for making coffins. These durable and scented woods are still in use after thousands of years
for the same purpose. Zizyphus was used as wooden mortar for pounding grains. This wood has the
property of shock absorbing and the Harappans were quite aware of the fact.
Dalbergia sissoo (Sissoo) and Holarrhena antidysenterica (Kurchi) —these two timber-yielding plants were
found in Hastinapura. These plants provide good fuel woods. It is not known whether these were used as
firewood or charcoal. It is assumed that the Copper Age civilization was aware about the woods that have
high calorific value.
In Iron Age the species of Quercus were used in making buildings and boats. At the site of exacavation at
Brigg at South Humberside a boat made up of Quercus wood was preserved. It was interesting to find that
the main logs of the boat were sewn together with twigs of Salix.
The twigs were twisted and passed through the regularly made holes on the timbers. No nails were used to
hold the timbers. Corylus were well preserved in waterlogged condition in Somerset at Bronze Age. These
were used in building track ways across swampy grounds.
Apart from wood and charcoal other archaeological plant remains are also preserved. As for example a
sandal was preserved in ancient Egypt. Anatomical studies reveal that it is composed of Cyperus papyrus
and Borassus sp.
Application # 5. Applied Aspects of Meristem Culture:
Meristems may be apical, intercalary and lateral. Each of the meristems is exploited in the improvement of
plants.
Apical meristems occur at the tips of root, leaf and shoot. The shoot apical meristems are particularly used
in culture. In culture method the shoot apical meristem is excised out and placed in a glass container,
containing nutrient. In a strict botanical sense the cells in the apical dome of shoot apex compose the
meristem. In apical meristem culture the sub-millimetre shoot tip with 0.1 to 0.5 mm high apical dome is
dissected out and placed in nutrient media.

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Different media are used for different plants. The media usually consist of a carbohydrate source, minerals,
vitamins, aminoacids, growth regulators and the gelling agent agar. Perfect temperature, humidity, filtered
air and controlled light are necessary during the culture. Aseptic condition is the prime importance in all the
steps of culture to check the introduction of pathogens.
.
Application # 6. Provides Evidences in Forensic Investigation:
The application of forensic science is indispensable in investigating a crime. Forensic science has many
disciplines and forensic botany is one of them. Forensic botany encompasses many sub- disciplines, which
include plant anatomy, plant systematic (taxonomy and species identification), palynology (the study of
spores and pollen) etc. They refer the use of plant materials in solving crimes or resolving other legal
problems.
Plants remains are present everywhere. In a crime scene they may occur in the form of macroscopic pieces
(ex. wood, twigs, leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds etc.) or microscopic forms (ex. pollen, spores, trichomes, cell
walls in stomach contents etc.). The morphological and anatomical diversity expressed by plant species
provide characters to identify plant parts. Species identification is a prerequisite in analyzing botanical
evidences for casework.
Plant anatomy provides characters such as trichomes, stomata, cuticular pattern, leaf venation, wood
anatomy, growth rings etc. to aid in species identification and in performing physical matches of evidence.
The identified plant materials help the investigators of criminal cases to determine whether a suspect was
present in a crime scene, in which season the crime occurred, how long the body has been buried, whether
the body has been moved etc.
The development of DNA typing methods for plant species enables to identify plant species and thus helps
in solving criminal and civil cases. Though the traditional microscopic anatomical identification is not always
conclusive, it is still in use for preliminary identification. Moreover the anatomical techniques are simple and
inexpensive.

Application # 7. Provides Characters of Taxonomic Significance:

It is the prime importance to know exactly to which species a plant specimen belongs. This is necessary for
a natural and reliable classification. Most of the plants are classified according to their macro-morphological
features. But an accurate classification results when the information from diverse sources are utilized.
The sources may be from anatomical features, palynology, biochemistry, embryology, cytogenetics,
phytogeography, physiology etc. It is now realized that alpha taxonomy can form a natural, accurate and
reliable classification.
Once morphology and anatomy formed the backbone of taxonomy. Anatomical features provide characters
to supplement the macro-morphological characters of plant species.

REFERENCES

 ©2020 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

 Bidlack, James E.el al. 2011. Stern’s Plant Biology. Stern’s Introductory Plant Biology. 13 th Edition.
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https://biologydiscussion.com>plants.

Https://britannica.com.science/medicine

LHS- ELECTIVE 9
SELF- ASSESSMENT TEST

Name: _________________________________________ Date: _________________ Score: _______________

l.Direction: Answer briefly and precisely.

A. What is the importance of studying plant biology or botany?

_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________________________________

B. Make a short historical Outline in Botany, includes their major contribution. ( Name and his/her contribution)

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