Botany

Introduction To Botany

Biology, the study of life, is one of the most interesting sciences

because it deals with things that are alive. It is concerned with

mammals, amphibians, annelids, mollusks, birds, insects, trees,

flowers, molds, and ferns and the interdependence of each on the

other.

Two of the most important groups of organisms, or living things, are plants and animals. The study of animals is called

zoology. The study of plants is called botany. Botany will be

our study in this course of science.

Botany deals with plants that are so tiny that a very powerful

microscope is necessary to see them. But it is also concerned with the big sequoyia trees of California, the great eucalyptus of Australia,

as well as with the dwarf willows of the Arctic which are no more than

six inches in height.

Some branches of botany include:

• Agronomy--the study of crops.• Olericulture and pomology--the study of fruits

and vegetables.• Plant anatomy--the study of structure.• Plant physiology--the study of function.• Genetics--the study of plant DNA.• Plant ecology--the relationship of plants to their

environment.• Plant pathology--the study of plant diseases.

Botany also connects the fields mentioned above. As in the changes that occur in a

leaf as it forms glucose from carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight. Glucose, the basic food

substance of all organisms may then be changed to wood, cotton, fiber, a variety of resins and solvents, and the body structure of organisms. The body of these organisms may be fossilized to form coal, petroleum,

and natural gas.

Botany is about how people studied, thought, experimented, and then studied more until they

became great biologists. It is the study that the English scientist, Robert Hooke,

followed in observing the thin slices of cork where he saw tiny

cavities that he called cells.

It is the path that the German botanist, Mathias Schleiden, followed to determine that all

living things are made of cells.

The botanist Gregor Mendel, an Austrian monk, while working

with garden peas, discovered the principles that control

inheritance.

The principles of botany allowed Alexander Fleming to discover penicillin from a culture of mold.

Each day, modern botanists make new discoveries relating to plants.

It must be said, that it is plants that feed the world. This alone makes botany a most important

endeavor.

HISTORY OF BOTANY

Botany arose from the attempts of primitive men to obtain their basic needs. Thus man's first botanical concerns

were undoubtedly food, shelter, and clothing.

Hieroglyphs and pictures painted on ancient tombs showed that man knew of plant lore. Assyrians and Egyptians as long as 4000 B.C.

were practical plant scientists of a high type. Ancient Chinese also

had a wide knowledge of plant uses and cultivation.

In primitive America, the use of plants was common. The Indians

cultivated corn, squash, beans, and tobacco. Their medicine men used various plants or plant parts in their rituals. The native Americans knew which roots were good to eat and

which plants to gather carefully and store.

The actual beginnings of botany as a science is usually accredited to the Golden Age of Greece. From the practical use of

plants came a careful study of the nature of plants. Medicinal uses ranked high with the Greeks. Theophrastus, a pupil of Plato and Aristotle, wrote books about plants in which

he addressed plant anatomy and physiology, diseases, and uses. He used

exacting terms such as fiber, vessels, bark, and pith.

During the long period of the Dark Ages, little or no light was thrown on the study of plants. What little knowledge that was

gained is accredited to the Arabians and their work with the

medicinal qualities of plants.

Beginning in the seventeenth century there was an awakening in scientists' minds. The

structure of plants was investigated carefully. In 1665, Robert Hooke, a British

scientist, published a paper called "Micrographia," in which he described his

study of a very thin piece of cork in which he had seen many tiny parts that reminded him

of the walls of a honeycomb. He called these little parts cells. Apparently Hooke failed to recognize that what he had seen

was only the walls of what we know today as cells.

Now two other men enter the picture. An English physician, Nehemiah Grew, began to study plant parts and became know as the "Father of Modern

Plant Anatomy." Unknown to Grew, an Italian physician and university professor, Marcello Malpighi, was doing similar studies. Grew's

writing, titled The Anatomy of Vegtetables Begun, was published by the Royal Society of London in 1672. At the same time, the Society received a report of Malpighi's work on the same subject. These two reports became standard reference

works for many years.

Even though 173 years were to pass before another significant step was made in the study of

plant anatomy, not all was dormant in the minds of scientists. In 1699 a boy was born in Darby,

Pennslyvania, John Bartram, who was to become known as the "Father of American Botany." As a

boy in the American colonies, he was interested in plants--not how they were constructed or how they functioned, but the many different kinds of plants.

Since the few books he could come by were written in Latin or Greek, he had to learn to read

those languages. While he had no University training, he made very careful observations and

become a well-known figure not only in the colonies but abroad as well.

Bartram constructed a botanical garden in what is now a part of Philadelphia's city park system. Here he began what were probably the first experiments in the hybridization of plants.

One of Bartram's children, William, accompanied his father in 1765 on a famous journey up the St. Johns

River in Florida. They made collections of plants, some of which

were sent to Philadelphia, and others to English botanists. In

addition, they made observations of the soil, trees and animals, and

mapped the St. Johns River.

Bartram corresponded extensively with European scientists. So great was the fame of John Bartram the Linneus called him "The

World's Greatest Natural Botanist."Neither of the Bartrams were interested in

the systematic arrangement of plants (plant taxonomy), but rather they were interested in the collecting of various speciemens. In fact, no one had figured out a way to easily name and classify plants until Carl Linnaeus

appeared.

Linnaeus was born in Sweden in 1707. He didn't do very well in the common school subjects of his day--he was more interested in plants. He also liked the physical sciences, such as physics.

When he was twenty years old, he entered the University of Lund where he become a personal friend of Dr. Strobaeous, Professor of Medicine.

The following year, he transferred to the University of Upsala where the medical training was

supposed to be better. Subsequently he became a good friend of the dean, Dr. Celsius, who

likewise was interested in botany. Linnaeus was an enthusiastic botany student and before he graduated was lecturing to large audiences.

Linnaeus earned a degree at the University of Harderwijk in Holland, traveled extensively, then

returned to Sweden to practice medicine. He finally won the position of Professor of Botany at

the University of Upsala and was very successful. Here he attracted large numbers of students,

reorganized the botanical garden, which had fallen into decay, and produced a number of fine scientific books. His advice was sought by governments as well as private individuals.

Eventually he was knighted and took the title of von Linne.

• Linnaeus is most noted for his binomial system of nomenclature, or two-part naming system. He placed structurally similar organisms into a group he called a species, similar species into a larger group called a genus, and similar genera into a family. Similar families were placed in an order; similar orders, in a class; and similar classes, in a phylum. Finally, Linnaeus placed phyla into a plant or animal kingdom. Since, many taxonomists have added a domain.

In Linnaeus’s system, the species name or scientific name has two parts.

The first part is the genus and the second part is the species or species identifier. Because of these two part

names, the system is called the Binomial System of Nomenclature. The scientific names are latinized so

that they are the same in every language. We placed in text, they are

underlined or printed in italics.

Today, taxonomists not only study structure but also look at embryology,

DNA evidence, biochemical processes, behavior, and distributions. Modern

taxonomists have also added subdivisions to each category and

replaced the term phylum with the term division in the plant kingdom. Currently

six kingdoms are designated in classification.

A relatively new field of systematic classification is called cladistics. Cladistics uses certain features of organisms called

shared derived characters to establish relationships. A derived character is a trait that exists only in the group of organisms being considered and not in other groups.

This method of classification can be used to make cladograms to show ancestry.

A Dutch botanist, Du Humel continued the study of plant parts. In 1831, Robert Brown, a Scottish botanist, discovered the nucleus of a plant cell while studying orchids. Hugo von Mohl called attention to the fact that the contents of a cell were alive. Two German scientists, Matthias J. Schleiden, a botanist,

and Theodor Schwann, a zoologist, each working indepenedently, laid the foundations

for the "Cell Theory" by stating that both plants and animals are made of cells, cells are the unit structure of living things, and that all cells come from preexisting cells.

Economics of plant use has played a role in the history of botany also. Luthur Burbank was born in

Lancaster, Massachusetts, in 1849. From his boyhood he was interested in nature and was stimulated by the work of Charles Darwin. He

studied in the town academy. While gardening for his widowed mother, he began to experiment with

the inherited traits of garden plants. One of his earliest dicoveries was a potato he grew from

seeds found in a pod of the "Early Rose" variety. He sold the best of the twenty-three seedlings

produced, and the dealer named it the "Burbank Potato."

Burbank decided to move to the fertile lands of California where he settled at Santa

Rosa. Here he worked, saved his money, bought a nursery, and built a prosperous

business. He sold his nursery in 1893, then set up an experimental farm at Sebastopol

where by selection and cross-pollenation, he developed new vegetables, fruits, trees,

grasses, flowers, and grains. Other plants developed by Burbank included the Shasta

daisy, a spineless cactus, and a white blackberry.

One of our greatest scientists was born a slave about 1859 near

Diamond Grove, Missouri. As a baby, he and his mother were

stolen by night raiders; it is said his master bought him back in

exchange for a race horse. He was George Washington Carver,

whose many discoveries helped to revolutionize agriculture in the

South.

As a boy, George was interested in plants and rocks. He learned their names and became known as a "plant doctor." He

entered Simpson College at Indianola, Iowa, where he studied art; there he earned his

way by cooking, doing laundry, and serving as a janitor. Later he entered Iowa State

College, from which he graduated in 1894. Then he became an assistant botanist, took

charge of the greenhouse, and started a fungus collection that brought him fame.

In 1896 he joined the staff at the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama at the invitation of the great black

educator Booker T. Washington. There he spent the rest of his life. His life savings of $33,000 went to

the George Washington Carver Foundation For Agricultural

Research, established at Tuskegee in 1940.

His great contribution to American life was in the products he found that could be developed from three common Southern crops. The peanut, he found, could produce more than 300 products,

ranging from instant coffee to soap and ink. The sweet potato produced 118 products, while pecans

accounted for 75 more. He found how to make synthetic marble from wood shavings, dyes from clay, and starch, gum, and wallboard from corn

stalks. It is said that he showed Southerners how they could have a complete diet by eating only peanuts and sweet potatoes. Carver died on

January 5, 1943, a highly honored and distinguished American scientist.

Two scientists, Watson and Crick, did an outstanding series of experiments and calculations by which they arrived

at the double helix structure of the DNA molecule and showed how the

molecule could reproduce itself and direct the production of proteins. This

was one of the highlights in the advancement of scientific knowledge,

and earned for these learned gentlemen the 1962 Nobel Prize in

Medicine.

Alexander Fleming, a Scotsman, served as a captain in the Royal Medical Corps in France during

World War I. He found that some of the antiseptics used actually

promoted wound infections. This influenced Dr. Fleming to try to find a bacteria fighter that would not be

harmful to human tissue. The discovery happened by accident.

The story of how Dr. Fleming found his "wonder drug" is a classic one. He had some culture plates

sitting on a window sill of his laboratory. In examining them one morning, he noticed that

some mold had contaminated one and in the area surrounding the mold, the bacteria was dying.

Why? He determined that the mold was a common one that grew on overripe oranges and in

Roquefort cheese. It was Penicillin mold. He decided to examine this mold further. He found that he could grow it in test tubes; that it thrived

best in meat broth, bread, and cheese; and that it harmed bacteria but did not damage white blood

cells.

He wrote a paper describing his discovery, but unfortunately the medical community paid scant attention to Dr. Fleming's report. They were not

yet ready to acknowledge that a mold could act as a medicine and the sulfa drugs were receiving a lot

of the attention at that time. Then Dr. Howard W. Florey, an Oxford University pathologist, began working with

penicillin. The mold thrived in his test tubes and one day he found some droplets on the suface of

the mold. He had found a new antibiotic. It proved spectacular in many tests and was first used on a large scale in Tunisia and Sicily during World War

II. It was soon saving millions of lives.

These men along with countless others have laid the

foundation for our modern botany. The millions of

discoveries that have been made since sits on the

shoulders of these giants.