BIO 1202: BOTANY LECTURE

FAR EASTERN UNIVERSITY

INSTRUCTORS:
INSTITUTE OF ARTS & SCIENCES: BS MEDICAL BIOLOGY

[TRANS] BOTANY CHAPTER I: WHAT IS PLANT BIOLOGY?

• White fibers in cotton bolls are the source of textiles and fabrics. The
OUTLINE bolls contain seeds, which produces oils used for the production of
margarine and shortening. After the oils have been extracted, the
What is Plant Biology? remaining “cotton cake” is used for the cattle feed.
A. Introduction to Plant Biology • In 2025, 12.5% of world energy consumption was renewable, and it
B. The Relationship of Humans to their Environment is predicted that this will increase by 13.7% by 2020.
a. Human and Animal Dependence on Plants • The United States is the largest producer of ethanol.
C. Botany as a Science
• Corn, switchgrass, and other sources of carbohydrates are currently
Hypotheses
used in the manufacture of ethanol.
A. Diversification of Plant Study
• There are concerns about losing food cropland to produce fuel.

INTRODUCTION TO PLANT BIOLOGY • Cellulosic ethanol, which is derived from inedible plant fiber such as
• Plant life constitutes more than 98% of the total biomass. wood chips, or switchgrass, may overcome some of these concerns.
• Plants and other green organisms produce oxygen while packing the
sun’s energy into compounds. BOTANY AS SCIENCE
• The backbone of these compounds is carbon. • Botany is the study of plants.
• All life on earth depends on green organisms. • From the Greek words, botanikos (botanical), botanae (plant/herb),
• Tropical rainforests once covered 14% of the Earth’s land surface, and boskein (to feed).
now occupy only 6% of land area. • Science, a search for knowledge of the natural world.
• Rain forests may be destroyed within 40 years. • Botanists, scientists who studies plants.
• Rain forests are home to 50% pf all species living organisms; it is
estimated that 137 species are destroyed every day. HYPOTHESIS
• Plants provide important narcotic and medicinal drugs.
• Simply a tentative, unproven explanation for something that has
• California redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) and giant sequoia been observed.
(Sequoiadendron giganteum) trees can grow to heights of 90 meters
• May not be the correct explanation.
or more.
• Trees actually expend little more energy for water transport. They
SCIENTIFIC EXPERIMENT
take advantage of energy from the sun to pull water from the roots
• Typically carried out with a test group of plants and a control group.
to the leaves.

TEST GROUP
THE RELATIONSHIP OF HUMANS TO THEIR
• Receives the experimental treatment.
ENVIRONMENT
• The estimated total human population of the world was fewer than CONTROL GROUP
20 million in 6000 BC.
• Treated the same way, except, it does not receive the treatment.
• During the next 7750 years, it rose to 500 million.
• By 1850, it doubled to 1 billion. DATA
• 70 years later, it doubled again to 2 billion. • When a hypothesis is tested, these bits of information are
• In 2011, it had reached a milestone, exceeding 7 billion. accumulated and may lead to the formulation of a useful
• The Earth remains constant in size, but the human population generalization called principle.
continues to grow.
• In May 2018, 7.6 billion people inhabited the Earth. PRINCIPLE
• We have drained wetlands and cleared natural vegetation from vast • Useful generalization.
areas of land.
• We have dumped wastes and other pollutants into our water and THEORY
atmosphere. • Group of generalizations that help us understand something.
• Biological pests control will have to be used whenever possible. • Not a guess.
• We reject or modify theories only when new principles increase our
HUMAN AND ANIMAL DEPENDENCE ON PLANTS understanding of a phenomenon.
• Plants are also the sources of products that are so much part of
human society that we largely take the for granted. DIVERSIFICATION OF PLANT STUDY
• Fruits, vegetables, and grains are from plants. Condiments such as
spices, and luxuries, such as perfumes, are produced by plants, as PLANT ANATOMY
are some dyes, adhesives, digestible surgical stitching fiber, food • Concerned with the internal structure of plants.
stabilizers, beverages, and emulsifiers. • Early plant anatomists of note included Marcello Malpighi (1628 –
• Vegetable and herbs are major sources of nutrients in the human 1694) of Italy, who discovered various tissues in stems and roots,
diet. and Nehemiah Grew (1628 – 1711) of England, who described the
• Coal is a fossilized plant material, and oil comes from the structure of wood more precise than any of his predecessors.
microscopic green organisms or animal that either important ones, • Used to help us find clues to the past.
including most antibiotics, still do. • Dendrochronology – determining the past climates by examining the
• Microscopic organisms play a vital role in recycling both plant and width and other features of tree rings.
animal wastes and aid in the building of healthy soils.

DELA ROSA | TERM 1 | MEDICAL BIOLOGY

1
 CHAPTER 1: WHAT IS PLANT BIOLOGY?

• Used to solve crimes. They may use fragments of plant tissues found • Received a boost from the discovery of how cells multiply and how
on clothing or under fingernails to determine where a crime took their components perform and integrate a variety of functions,
place or if certain people could have been present where the crime including the sexual reproduction.
was committed.
• Paleobotany – form of plant anatomy that focuses on plant fossils to ECONOMIC BOTANY & ETHNOBOTANY
help us understand how plants evolved. • Focuses on practical uses of plants and plant products.

PLANT PHYSIOLOGY
• Concerned with the plant function.
• Established by J. B. van Helmont (1577 – 1644), a Flemish physician
and chemist, who was the first to demonstrate that plants do not
have the same nutritional needs as animals.
• Modern plant physiologists used cloned genes (units of hereditary
that are found mostly within the nuclei of cells) to learn more about
plant functions, including how plants conduct materials internally;
how temp, light, and water are involved in plant growth ;why plants
flower; and how plant growth regulatory substances are produced.

PLANT TAXONOMY
• Describing, naming, and classifying organisms.
• Plant taxonomists – botanists who specialize in taxonomy.
• We owe so much to Swedish botanist Carolus Linnaeus (1707 –
1778) in naming and classifying plants.

PLANT SYSTEMATICS
• Related to plant taxonomy but is broader.
• Science of developing methods for grouping organisms.
• Oldest branch of plant study.
• Thousands of plant names used today are those originally recorded
in Linnaeus’s book Species Plantarum, published in 1753.
• Cladistics – analysis of shared features; used by taxonomists.

PLANT GEOGRAPHY
• Study of how and why plants are distributed where they are, did not
develop until the 19th century.

PLANT ECOLOGY
• Study of the interaction of plants with one another and with their
environment, also developed in the 19th century.
• Biomes – large community of plants and animals that occur in areas
with distinctive combinations of environmental features. Occupying
about 6% of the Earth’s surface.

PLANT MORPHOLOGY
• Study of form and structure of plants, developed in the 19th century.
• During the 20th century, the number of scientists engaged in
investigating planst also greatly increased.

GENETICS
• Found by Austrian monk Gregor Mendel (1822 – 1884), who
performed the classic experiment with pea plants.

BRANCHES OF GENETICS
• Plant breeding
o Greatly improved the yields and quality of crop plants.
• Genetic engineering
o Involve the transfer of genes from one organism to another.

BIOINFORMATICS
• Combines biology, statistics, and computer science to analyze huge
data sets being generated by DNA and RNA sequencing efforts.

CELL BIOLOGY
• Science of cell structure and function.

DELA ROSA | TERM 1 | MEDICAL BIOLOGY 2