Botany

the science of plants. The history of botany among the ancients begins with Aristotle and Pliny. A Greek physician named Dioscorides left a record of the medicinal value of many plants. The chief botanical interest in the Middle Ages lay in the study of plants as remedies. The early collections were made, and the first botanic gardens were established, in the interest of medical science. Physicians led the way in the study of new plants. The next phase of botanical research was the arrangement of plants in groups. In the eighteenth century Tournefort, Linnaeus, and Jussieu worked out the classification of plants. A group of workers connected with Kew Garden, notably Banks, Lindley, and Bentham had unsurpassed facilities for collecting and receiving material from all parts of the vast British Empire. In North America Nuttall, Torrey, Gray, Engleman, and Vasey were privileged beyond their associates in facilities for receiving, classifying, and naming new plants.

As the result of two centuries of diligent, systematic work, the greater part of the plants of the world have been named or at least grouped as follows:

Now that systematic botany is so well under way, other departments are receiving more attention. Of late the life of the lower forms, especially bacteria, has been a subject of intense investigation. After comparative silence for half a century medical science has reappeared in the botanical field and has shown that plant life is connected with many contagious diseases. Plant physiology and economic botany, or the study of plants useful in the arts, are well recognized departments.

Ecology is a term recently brought into prominence to designate the adaptation of a plant to the place it lives in. The comparative structure of dry-ground, low-ground, and water plants belongs here, as well as a study of desert, arctic, tropical, jungle, and prairie plants. Agricultural botany or the science of farm crops is a study in itself.

It was quite possible for a Linnaeus to know practically all that was known on the subject in his day, but knowledge has extended so rapidly and botany has been subdivided into so many branches, that it is now possible for a scholar to master only a small part of the present science in a life time.

See Linnaeus; Jussieu; De Candolle; Kew; Algae; Fungi; Bacteria; Yeast; Ferns; Grasses; Sedges; Bamboo; Palm; Cereals; Floriculture; Teak; Elm; Oak; Sequoia; Euphorbia; Medicine; Kauri; Vegetables; etc.