Botany

November
Good morning :)
 QBY9NYGE
PSY2 - Harlow
 UWH2SORG
PSY2-SKINNER
 Plant life

Constitutes > 98% of the

total BIOMASS of the earth

BIOMASS - collective dry

weight of living
organisms

Exclusive capacity to
produce O2
 Plants

Remove large
amounts of CO2
given off by all
living organisms as
they respire
All living organisms are
totally dependent on
green organisms for
their existence

If they kill all plants,

animals would starve

11 years - use up earth's

O2 if not replaced
 Population

6000 BC < 20M

7,750 years after =

500M

1850 = 1B

70 years after = 2B

1980 = 4.48 B
 Population

Grows 80 M annually

2006 = 6.5 B

2025 > 7.8B

Environment

Drained wetlands

cleared natural vegetation

Dumped wastes and other pollutants in

the rivers and oceans and lakes
Added pollution to the
environment

Killed pests & plant

organisms with poison

Poison kills natural

predators and other
useful organisms
Disruption in the
delicate balance of
nature that existed
before humans began
degrading their
nature surrounding
 To
survive

Return organic material to the soil

Harvesting timber and other crops

properly to prevent topsoil erosion

No chemicals when clearing bush

Recycle
Biological controls
instead of poisonous
materials

Water and energy

conservation

Public awareness

Preserve rare plants

Effects of human
carelessness
Human & animal
dependence
Remove
CO2
Sources of all products
All foods owe their
existence to plants
Spices and perfumes
 Botany
3 Greek words

Botanikos (botanical)

Botane (plant or herb)

Boskein (to feed)

 French word

Botanique
- botanical
 Botanist

Scientists
who study
plants
 Botany

Observation

Recording

Organization

Classification

What is done
Scientific procedure

Involves the process

of experimentation,
observation and
verifying or
discarding of
information
Scientific
procedure

Ask questions

Formulate hypothesis

Experiment

Develop a theory
 1. Plant anatomy

Study of the
internal structure
of plants

Marcelo Malpighi
- discovered
tissues in stems
and roots
Nehemiah Grew
 Paleobotany

Study of
plant fossils
 Plant anatomy

Forensic laboratory

Fragments of plant tissue on clothes,

under fingernails

Determine where the crime took

place

Persons have been in the crime scene

2. Plant physiology

Study of plant function

How plants conduct materials internally

How temperature, light, and water are involved

with growth

Why plants flower

How the plant growth regulatory substances are

produced
 J.B. van Helmont

Flemish physician
and chemist

Demonstrated that
plants do to have the
same nutritional
needs as animals
3. Plant taxonomy

Study of describing,
naming and classifying
organisms
Carolus Linnaeus

Swedish botanist

Named and classified plants

Species Plantarum (book)

Plant systematics - science of
developing methods for grouping
organisms

Pteridologists - study ferns

Bryologists - study mosses

4. Plant geography

Study of how and why plants are

distributed where they are
 5. Plant ecology

Study of the
interaction of
plants with one
another and with
the environment
6. Plant morphology

Study of the
form and
structure of
plants
 7. Genetics
Science of heredity

Gregor Mendel - Austrian monk

Plant breeding - greatly
improved yields and
quality of crop plants

Genetic engineering -
introduction of genes
from one organism to
another
9. Economic botany
and ethnobotany
Include practical uses of plants and
plant products
 Microscope
Indispensable tool of most botanist
and biologists
1590 Dutch family

Found out they could magnify tiny

objects more than 30x when they
combined 2 convex lenses in a tube
 Anton van
Leeuwenhoek
Dutch

Ground lenses

Made 400
microscopes by
hand

Magnify up to 200x
 Electron
microscope
Mid 20th century

Cell research

Vast new insights into

cells and new forms of
cell research