=Introduction to Plants and Botany= =History and Development of Botany as a field

of Science=
PLANTS
● is the general term of the diverse groups of Humans have always been interested in the
organisms that exist in the kingdom plant life around them, not only because plants are
Plantae. inherently fascinating but also because they can
● typically characterized by serve useful purposes as food and medicine.
○ lack of locomotion (rooted)
○ absence of sensory organs and a Theophrastus
nervous system, - The ancient Greek scholar who lived during
○ synthesizes polymers (molecules) the 4th Century B.C.
by photosynthesis, and; - was one of the most famous early
○ could reproduce sexually or botanists
asexually. - He first studied with Plato then became a
● can be seen everywhere, when all the basic disciple of Aristotle. He wrote two major
requirements of plant growth are available sets of books on plants, and his writings
and that includes sunlight, soil (nutrients made him known as the “Father of
and mineral) and water. Botany”.
● There could be some plants that can growth - Out of the 200 botanical treatises the two
even without being rooted on soil because books that survived written in Latin were De
available nutrients are found in the water causis plantarum (On the causes of
and others thrive is extreme environments Plants) and De historia plantarum
like a cactus. (Enquiry into Plants).

BOTANY Unlike Theophrastus, who classified plants as

- branch of biology that deals with the study of trees, shrubs, and herbs, Dioscorides grouped his
plants, including their structure, properties, plants under three headings: as aromatic, culinary,
and biochemical processes and medicinal.
- Also included are plant classification and the
study of plant interactions with the Pedaniua Dioscorides
environment. The principles and the findings - From 90-40 A.D. he was another Greek
of botany have provided the base for such botanist who wrote an encyclopaedia about
applied sciences as agriculture, the herbal medicines called De Materia
horticulture, and forestry. Medica (“On Medical Substances”).
- In his major work, an herbal in Greek, he
Agriculture described some 600 kinds of plants, with
- is the active production of useful plants comments on their habit of growth and form
(crops) or animals in ecosystems that have as well as on their medicinal properties
been created by people. - De Materia Medica
Horticulture ● served as an important medicinal
- the branch of plant agriculture dealing with guidebook for over 1500 years, until
garden crops, generally fruits, vegetables, widespread use of the compound
and ornamental plants. The word is derived microscope in the 19th Century.
from the Latin hortus, “garden” and colere,
“to cultivate”. Cato the Elder, Varro, Virgil, and Columella
Forestry - From the 2nd century BCE to the 1st
- the management of forested land, together century CE
with associated waters and wasteland, - a succession of Roman writers
primarily for harvesting timber.
 - prepared Latin manuscripts on farming, Robert Hooke (1665)
gardening, and fruit growing but showed - he published, under the title Micrographia,
little evidence of the spirit of scientific inquiry the results of his microscopic observations
for its own sake that was so characteristic of on several plant tissues.
Theophrastus. - He is remembered as the coiner of the word
“cell,” referring to the cavities he observed in
Pliny the Elder thin slices of cork; his observation that living
- In the 1st century CE, though no more cells contain sap and other materials too
original than his Roman predecessors, often has been forgotten.
seemed more industrious as a compiler.
- His Historia naturalis—an encyclopaedia of Nehemiah Grew and Marcello Malpighi (1671)
37 volumes, compiled from some 2,000 - founded plant anatomy
works representing 146 Roman and 327 - they communicated the results of
Greek authors—has 16 volumes devoted to microscopic studies simultaneously to the
plants. Royal Society of London, and both later
published major treatises.
15th and 16th centuries
- many herbals were published with the Stephen Hales (1727)
purpose of describing plants useful in - Experimental plant physiology began with
medicine. his brilliant work who published his
- Written by physicians and medically oriented observations on the movements of water
botanists, the earliest herbals were based in plants under the title Vegetable Staticks
largely on the work of Dioscorides and to a (1727).
lesser extent on Theophrastus, but gradually - His conclusions on the mechanics of water
they became the product of original transpiration in plants are still valid, as is his
observation. discovery—at the time a startling one—that
- The invention of the optical lens during the air contributes something to the materials
16th century and the development of the produced by plants.
compound microscope about 1590
opened an era of rich discovery about Joseph Priestley (1774)
plants; prior to that time, all observations by - showed that plants exposed to sunlight give
necessity had been made with the unaided off oxygen
eye.
Jan Ingenhousz (1779)
17th Century - demonstrated that plants in the dark give off
The botanists of the 17th century turned away carbon dioxide
from the earlier emphasis on medical botany and
began to describe all plants, including the many Nicolas de Saussure (1804)
new ones that were being introduced in large - demonstrated convincingly that plants in
numbers from Asia, Africa, and America. sunlight absorb water and carbon dioxide
and increase in weight, as had been
Gaspard Bauhin reported by Hales nearly a century earlier.
- Among the most prominent botanists of
this era who for the first time developed, in a 18th century
tentative way, many botanical concepts - The widespread use of the microscope by
still held as valid. plant morphologists provided a turning point
in the 18th century— botany became largely
a laboratory science.
 - Until the invention of simple lenses and the in a series of new discoveries, new
compound microscope, the recognition and concepts, and new fields of botanical
classification of plants were, for the most endeavor.
part, based on such large morphological
aspects of the plant as size, shape, and Present
external structure of leaves, roots, and - new technology is used to understand the
stems. Such information was also structure of plant cells further, and research
supplemented by observations on more is being done on genetic engineering of
subjective qualities of plants, such as plants in an attempt to solve the problem of
edibility and medicinal uses. world hunger.
- Research is also focusing on ecology and
Carolus Linnaeus (1753) climate change (ecology itself became a
- published his master work, Species separate discipline in the 1940s).
Plantarum, which contains careful - The goals of much present-day research
descriptions of 6,000 species of plants from include finding ways of producing better
all of the parts of the world known at the crops, developing new medicines from
time. molecules found in plants, and figuring out
- In this work, which is still the basic how best to conserve natural resources
reference work for modern plant in a time of population growth and changing
taxonomy, Linnaeus established the climate.
practice of binomial nomenclature.
- Linnaeus for the first time put the =Evolution of plants=
contemporary knowledge of plants into an Plant evolution
orderly system, with full acknowledgment - the process of biological and organic
to past authors, and produced a change within the plant kingdom by which
nomenclatural methodology so useful that it the characteristics of plants differ from
has not been greatly improved upon. generation to generation.
- The application of the concepts of Charles - Understanding of the course of plant
Darwin (on evolution) and Gregor Mendel evolution is based on several lines of
(on genetics) to plant taxonomy has evidence. The main levels of evolution have
provided insights into the process of long been clear from comparisons among
evolution and the production of new species. living plants, but the fossil record has been
critical in dating evolutionary events and
19th Century revealing extinct intermediates between
● chlorophyll was discovered, and scientists modern groups, which are separated from
began to understand the process of each other by great morphological gaps
photosynthesis. (evolutionary changes in many characters).
● the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel made - Plant evolution has been clarified by
advances in understanding genetic cladistic methods for estimating
inheritance through his experiments with relationships among both living and fossil
pea plants. groups. These methods attempt to
reconstruct the branching of evolutionary
20th century lines (phylogeny) by using shared
- saw an enormous increase in the rate of evolutionary innovations (for example,
growth of research in botany and the presence of a structure not found in other
results derived therefrom. groups) as evidence that particular
- The combination of more botanists, better organisms are descendants of the same
facilities, and new technologies, all with the ancestral lineage (a monophyletic group, or
benefit of experience from the past, resulted clade).
 Bryophytes
- are a group of plant species that reproduce
via spores rather than flowers or seeds.
Most bryophytes are found in damp
environments and consist of three types of
non-vascular land plants: the mosses,
hornworts, and liverworts

Characteristics of Bryophytes
1. Bryophytes are non-vascular land plants.
Although they do exhibit specialized
structures for water transportation, they are
Charophytes devoid of vascular tissue.
- are green algae that live predominantly in 2. Bryophytes grow primarily in damp
freshwater habitat. environments but can be found growing in
- greenish in color, photosynthetic (chlorophyll diverse habitats ranging from deserts, the
a and b) and eukaryotic. Its basic features artic, and high elevations. Since bryophytes
are due to the chlorophyll (green pigments) do not depend on root structures for nutrient
that are abundant in their thylakoids. uptake like vascular plants, they are able to
Charophytes are postulated to be the early survive in environments that vascular plants
ancestors of embryophytes (land plants). cannot (e.g., on the surface of rocks).
Embryophytes are more closely related to 3. All bryophytes have a dominant
the charophytes since their structures are gametophyte stage in their life cycle. During
more comparable. The charophytes, make this stage, the plant is haploid and the sex
up the green algae. As part of this algal organs that produce the gametes are
group, the charophytes are greenish in developed. Bryophytes are unique
colour. This is due to the abundant compared to many other plant species in
chlorophyll (green pigment) inside their cell. that they remain in this stage for long
Their cell wall is chiefly made up of periods.
cellulose. They store their food reserves as Examples:
starch. 1) Liverworts
Liverworts (shown below) are extremely small
plants characterized by flattened stems and
undifferentiated leaves, as well as single-celled
rhizoids. Liverworts can be distinguished from other
bryophyte species by the presence of
membrane-bound oil bodies within their cells,
compared to other species which do not contain
enclosed lipid bodies.

The stoneworts alga Chara gobularis

2) Mosses plants to spread to new habitats. Although seedless
- are green, clumpy plants often found in vascular plants have evolved to spread to all types
moist environments out of direct sunlight. of habitats, they still depend on water during
Mosses are characterized by leaves that are fertilization, as the sperm must swim on a layer of
only one cell wide attached to a stem that is moisture to reach the egg. This step-in reproduction
used for water and nutrient transportation. explains why ferns and their relatives are more
Mosses are able to absorb a substantial abundant in damp environments, including marshes
amount of water and have historically been and rainforests.
used for insulation, water absorption, and a The seedless vascular plants can be divided
source of peat. into three groups: Lycophyta (lycophytes or club
mosses), Sphenophyta (horsetails), and
Pterophyta (ferns). The third group of seedless
vascular plants is probably the most familiar. These
are the ferns or pterophytes. Most of us have seen
ferns growing on a forest floor or as cut fronds in a
flower arrangement. There are about 12,000
species of ferns in existence today, and they are
found in tropical and temperate regions.

=Seed vascular plants=

The term ‘vascular‘ is derived from the Latin
word vāsculum, vās, meaning “a container and
3) Hornworts
column”; the overall meaning of vascular is a small
- are named after the characteristic long
vessel. Compactly, the vascular plants are those
horn-like sporophyte that develops. In
plants that contain vascular tissues such as
contrast, the gametophyte form is a flat,
xylem(important for transporting water) and phloem
green-bodied plant. Most hornworts are
(essential for transporting minerals and nutrients).
found in damp environments (e.g., tropical
The vascular plants include all the seed-containing
climates), garden soils, or tree bark.
plants, angiosperms (flowering plants),
gymnosperms (non-flowering plants).

I) Flowering plant
- in simple terms is a plant that at some point
during its life cycle produces a flower.
- A flowering plant is called an angiosperm. It
is important to remember that the flower is
part of the reproduction cycle. All flowering
plants produce seeds.

II) Nonflowering plants

- are those that never produce a flower.
- Some nonflowering plants still produce
=Seedless vascular plants=
seeds; this type of plant is called a
Seedless vascular plants are plants that contain
gymnosperm. Conifer trees—pines, for
vascular tissue, but do not produce flowers or
example—are among the most well- known
seeds. In seedless vascular plants, such as ferns
gymnosperms.
and horsetails, the plants reproduce using haploid,
unicellular spores instead of seeds. The spores are
very lightweight (unlike many seeds), which allows
for their easy dispersion in the wind and for the
Plant Morphology
● Plant morphology (or phytomorphology) is
the general term for the study of the
morphology (physical form and external
structure) of plants.
● Plant morphology is useful in the
identification of plants.

Think about the many types of plants you know.

Trees, garden flowers, grass, bulbs, cacti, and vines
for example. Tremendous diversity is present, but if
we examine each of these, we find they all share
the same pattern of body organization. With only a
few exceptions, the body of every plant is organized
in the following simple way.

Roots, stems and leaves are the vegetative

organs of a plant. By that, we mean that they are
responsible for obtaining energy and materials for
growth and survival, but they do not carry out
sexual reproduction. When the plant is ready to
reproduce, reproductive organs develop. The
reproductive organs of most ferns are barely
distinguishable from vegetative organs. They are
basically just foliage leaves that produce spores on
their underside. Without turning leaf over to see if it
has spores, one will never guess that is not just an
ordinary leaf. Reproductive structures are a bit
more complex in the seed plants. Conifers make
seed cones and pollen cones, angiosperms make
flowers.