ACT OF

FAITH
O my God, I firmly believe that you are one
God in three devine persons, Father, son and
holy spirit. I believe that your devine Son
became man and died for our sins, and that He
will come to judge the living and the dead. I
believe these and all the truths which the Holy
Catholic Church teaches, because you have
revealed them who you can neither deceive
nor be deceived.
INTRODUCTION
OF BOTANY
 LEANING TARGETS:
-I can trace the historical background of
botany
-I can define botany
WHAT IS BOTANY?
- systematic and scientific study of plants
- Greek work botan “Pasture” or “fodder”
- Theophrastus (371 – 287 BC)
WHAT ARE THE IMPORTANCE
OF PLANTS?
- Oxygen
- Human Nutrition
- Source of Medicine
 -85% of plant life is found in the ocean.
 -Bananas contain a natural chemical which can make people feel
happy.
 -Brazil is named after a tree.
 -The Amazon rainforest produces half the world’s oxygen supply.
 -Cricket bats are made of a tree called Willow and baseball bats
are made out of the wood of the Hickory tree.
 -Dendrochronology is the science of calculating a tree’s age by
its rings.
The history of botany goes as far as to 4th century
B.C.E. The man’s curiosity on plants lead to many
discoveries in Botany which shaped our current
lives in many ways. At present, various sub-fields
of botany have already emerged. These include the
following: plant pathology, plant ecology,
paleobotany, and forensic botany.
During the Pre-17th Century
4th Century B.C.E: Both Aristotle and Theophrastus got
involved in
identifying plants and describing them. Because of his
contributions, Theophrastus was hailed as the “Father of
botany” because of his two surviving works on plant studies.
Although Aristotle also wrote about plants, he received more
recognition for his studies of animals. In A.D. 60: Dioscorides
wrote De Materia Medica. This work described a thousand
medicines, majority of which came from plants. For 1500
years, it remained the guidebook on medicines in the
Western world until the invention of the
compound microscope.
Quote: “Medicine sometimes grants health, sometimes
destroys it, showing which plants are helpful, which do
harm.”
 DURING THE 17TH CENTURY
EARLY 17TH CENTURY: FOR A BRIEF PERIOD, THE SEARCH FOR
KNOWLEDGE IN THE FIELD OF BOTANY TEMPORARILY BECAME
STAGNANT. HOWEVER, THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING DURING THE
EUROPEAN RENAISSANCE RENEWED INTEREST IN PLANTS.
HISTORY OF BOTANY
 Theoprastus (371 – 287 BC)
- Greek student of Aristotle
- Historia Plantarium, 480 plants (structures and medicine value)
- 500,000 species
 Linnaeus
- Swedish Scientist
- Published Species Plantarium in 1753.
- Inventor of the “binomial system” of plant classification.
HISTORY OF BOTANY

 Gregor Mendel
- Austrian monk.
- Cross-pollinated peas in his garden.
- Is considered the “father of
genetics”
 EARLY BOTANY
 Ancient India (3700 – 3100)
- Plants are divided into vṛska (trees), osadhi (herbs useful to
humans) and virudha (creepers).
 Ancient China
- Many Chinese writers over the centuries contributed to the
written knowledge of herbal pharmaceutics.
- The Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 AD) includes the notable
work of the Huangdi Neijing and the famous pharmacologist
Zhang Zhongjing.

EARLY BOTANY
Theophrastus and the origin of
botanical science
- medicinal information with
descriptions of about 600 medicinal
herbs, the botanical content of the
work was extremely limited.

 EARLY BOTANY
Ancient Rome
- The Romans contributed little to the
foundations of botanical science laid by the ancient
Greeks, but made a sound contribution to our
knowledge of applied botany as agriculture.
- In works titled De Re Rustica four Roman
writers contributed to a compendium Scriptores Rei
Rusticae, published from the Renaissance on,
which set out the principles and practice of
Johannes van Helmont, in the year 1940,
measured the uptake of water in a tree.
Best-known for V experiment, placed a 5-
pound (about 2.2-kg) willow in an earthen
pot containing 200 pounds (about 90 kg)
of dried soil, and over a five-year period
and added nothing to the pot but rainwater
or distilled wate
 In the year 1665: Robert Hooke invented the
microscope. Because of this, Robert Hooke had
the chance to take a close look of how a cell looks
like. His description of these cells was published
in Micrographia. However, the cells seen by
Hooke showed no signs of the nucleus and other
organelles found in most living cells.
 Anton van Leeuwenhoek , in the
year 1674, saw a live cell under
a microscope, and invented the
first Microscope

In the year1686: John Ray published book,

Historia Plantarum. This became an important step
towards modern taxonomy (Arber 2010).
Rudolf Camerarius established plant
sexuality and published a book entitled
De Sexu Plantarum Epistola in the
year1694:
He stated that: “No ovules of plants
could ever develop into seeds from the
female style and ovary without first being
prepared by the pollen from the stamens,
the male sexual organs of the plant“.
 Stephen Hales , successfully established
plant physiology as a science in the year
1721. He published experiments dealing
with the nutrition and respiration of plants
publication entitled Vegetable Staticks. He
developed techniques to measure area,
mass, volume, temperature, pressure, and
even gravity in plants.
In the year 1760s: Botany became even more
widespread among educated women who painted
plants, attended classes on plant classification, and
collected herbarium specimens. However, the focus
of their study was on the healing properties of plants
rather than plant reproduction. Women began
publishing on botanical topics and children’s books
on botany appeared (Mason 2016).
The prize resulting from the period of exploration
was accumulated in gardens and herbaria. And the
task of systematically cataloging them was left to the
taxonomists.
Joseph Priestley laid the foundation for the
chemical analysis of plant metabolism in
the later part of 18th Century. He
published “
Experiments and Observations on Differen
t Kinds of Air
in 1774. The published paper
demonstrated that green plants absorb
“fixed air” (carbon dioxide) from the
atmosphere, give off “gas” or
“dephlogisticated air”, which is now
Progress in the study of plant fossils was made in the early
part of the nineteenth century, they are as follows
1818: Chlorophyll was discovered.
1840: Advances were made in the study of plant diseases
because of the potato blight that killed potato crops in
Ireland. This led to the further study of plant
diseases (Richman 2016).
1847: The process of photosynthesis was first elucidated
by Mayer. However, the exact and detailed mechanism
remained a mystery until the 1862.
Early 20th Century: The process of nitrogen fixation, nitrification,
and ammonification was discovered.
1903: The two types of chlorophyll—a and b were discovered.
1936: Through his experiment, Alexander Oparin demonstrated
the mechanism of the synthesis of organic matter from inorganic
molecules.
1940s: Ecology became a separate discipline. Technology has
helped specialists in botany to see and understand the three-
dimensional nature of cells, and genetic engineering of plants. This
had greatly improved agricultural crops and products.

Up until the present, the study of plants continues as botanists try to both understand the
structure, behavior, and cellular activities of plants. This endeavor is in order to develop
better crops, find new medicines, and explore ways of maintaining an ecological balance
on Earth to continue to sustain both plant and animal life
 GROUP ACTIVITY
Direction: Using a fishbone, make a timeline showing the development of
Botany. Include the dates, names of biologist and their contributions.
ASSIGNMENT

Branches of Botany and their meaning