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. Botany covers a wide range of scientific disciplines including structure, growth, reproduction, metabolism, development, diseases and chemical properties of plants.
Historically, botany originated as herbalism, the study and use of plants for their therapeutic properties. Many records of the Holocene period date early botanical knowledge as far back as 10,000 years ago. This early unrecorded knowledge of plants was discovered in ancient sites of human occupation within Tennessee, which make up much of the Cherokee land today. The late 16th-century Swiss physician and botanist Gaspard Bauhin described over 6000 different kinds of plants growing in Europe.
During the 17th century, systems were developed to classify these diverse species into groups that could be studied more easily. Along with Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778), whose binomial nomenclature system is still used to identify living organisms by genus and species, other pioneers include Giovanni Battista Ferrari (1649–1737),:23 Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829),:72 Robert Morison (1620–1683):193 – all from Europe – as well as Philip Miller (1691–1771) from England.:66 These works laid important foundations for modern taxonomy. By 1838 it had become customary to refer to “the Vegetable Kingdom”. However Linnaeus’ work did not extend beyond flowering plants while Morison’s only covered seed-bearing ones; both excluded fungi, algae,, lichens,, mosses, ferns,, liverworts [Jussieu’s natural classification put them near algae],(pp116ff) slime moulds , bacteria , fossil plants etcetera . Charles Darwin published his most famous work on evolution Origin Of Species in 1859 giving rise to new concepts about classification methods .) Genera Plantarum by Linnaeus included about 11000 species while Bentham & Hooker’s Genera Plantarum , first published in 1862 , contained almost double that number already .(p262) It became increasingly clear that there was an urgent need for some sort of overall organization if further progress was going to be made in understanding relationships between different groups at any level below kingdom . There followed many suggestions but no agreement until finally Alphonse de Candolle proposed what now seems an obvious solution : rank should reflect degree of similarity so closely related genera would be placed together regardless whether they were members respectively of two different families or orders etcetera ; this arrangement he termed ‘natural’ because it revealed hidden patterns within nature itself rather than being artificially imposed from outside.”(p8) De Candolle’s approach quickly gained widespread acceptance though there remained some dissenters such as Otto Kuntze who advocated returning to the older artificial systems:(pp133f)”