Misplaced Pages

Inverewe Garden

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
#172827

133-530: Inverewe Garden (Scottish Gaelic: Gàradh Inbhir Iù ) is a botanical garden in Wester Ross in the Scottish Highlands . It is located just to the north of Poolewe in Wester Ross , and is noted for the breadth of its collection. The garden was created from barren land in 1862 by Osgood Mackenzie on the 850-hectare (2,100-acre) estate bought for him by his mother. Initially the challenges were to provide

266-482: A botanical garden is defined by its scientific or academic connection, then the first true botanical gardens were established with the revival of learning that occurred in the European Renaissance . These were secular gardens attached to universities and medical schools, used as resources for teaching and research. The superintendents of these gardens were often professors of botany with international reputations,

399-483: A botanically and pharmacologically important herbal Historia Plantarum in 1544 and a pharmacopoeia of lasting importance, the Dispensatorium in 1546. Naturalist Conrad von Gesner (1516–1565) and herbalist John Gerard (1545– c.  1611 ) published herbals covering the supposed medicinal uses of plants. Naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605) was considered the father of natural history , which included

532-414: A considerable problem in agriculture, and the biology and control of plant pathogens in agriculture and natural ecosystems . Ethnobotany is the study of the relationships between plants and people. When applied to the investigation of historical plant–people relationships ethnobotany may be referred to as archaeobotany or palaeoethnobotany . Some of the earliest plant-people relationships arose between

665-452: A continuum between the major morphological categories of root, stem (caulome), leaf (phyllome) and trichome . Furthermore, it emphasises structural dynamics. Modern systematics aims to reflect and discover phylogenetic relationships between plants. Modern Molecular phylogenetics largely ignores morphological characters, relying on DNA sequences as data. Molecular analysis of DNA sequences from most families of flowering plants enabled

798-403: A department of an educational institution, it may be related to a teaching program. In any case, it exists for scientific ends and is not to be restricted or diverted by other demands. It is not merely a landscaped or ornamental garden, although it may be artistic, nor is it an experiment station or yet a park with labels on the plants. The essential element is the intention of the enterprise, which

931-524: A factor that probably contributed to the creation of botany as an independent discipline rather than a descriptive adjunct to medicine. The botanical gardens of Southern Europe were associated with university faculties of medicine and were founded in Italy at Orto botanico di Pisa (1544), Orto botanico di Padova (1545), Orto Botanico di Firenze (1545), Orto Botanico dell'Università di Pavia (1558) and Orto Botanico dell'Università di Bologna (1568). Here

1064-586: A garden in the United Kingdom is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Botanical garden A botanical garden or botanic garden is a garden with a documented collection of living plants for the purpose of scientific research, conservation, display, and education. It is their mandate as a botanical garden that plants are labelled with their botanical names . It may contain specialist plant collections such as cacti and other succulent plants , herb gardens , plants from particular parts of

1197-400: A hierarchical classification of plant species that remains the reference point for modern botanical nomenclature . This established a standardised binomial or two-part naming scheme where the first name represented the genus and the second identified the species within the genus. For the purposes of identification, Linnaeus's Systema Sexuale classified plants into 24 groups according to

1330-531: A noteworthy rhododendron collection in flower throughout the year. The garden also has a large collection of Erythroniums . These flower in Spring and in recent years the garden has promoted an Erythronium festival. In summer the walled garden and borders come into their own with many exotic plants from all over the world which grow here thanks to the influence of the North Atlantic current . Even in winter Inverewe

1463-524: A period of prosperity when the city was a trading centre for the Dutch East India Company . Other gardens were constructed in Brazil ( Rio de Janeiro Botanical Garden , 1808), Sri Lanka ( Botanic Gardens of Peradeniya , 1821 and on a site dating back to 1371), Indonesia ( Bogor Botanical Gardens , 1817 and Kebun Raya Cibodas , 1852), and Singapore ( Singapore Botanical Gardens , 1822). These had

SECTION 10

#1732858421173

1596-404: A plant sucks water through them under water stress. Lignin is also used in other cell types like sclerenchyma fibres that provide structural support for a plant and is a major constituent of wood. Sporopollenin is a chemically resistant polymer found in the outer cell walls of spores and pollen of land plants responsible for the survival of early land plant spores and the pollen of seed plants in

1729-552: A polymer of fructose is used for the same purpose in the sunflower family Asteraceae . Some of the glucose is converted to sucrose (common table sugar) for export to the rest of the plant. Unlike in animals (which lack chloroplasts), plants and their eukaryote relatives have delegated many biochemical roles to their chloroplasts , including synthesising all their fatty acids , and most amino acids . The fatty acids that chloroplasts make are used for many things, such as providing material to build cell membranes out of and making

1862-460: A process that generates molecular oxygen (O 2 ) as a by-product. The light energy captured by chlorophyll a is initially in the form of electrons (and later a proton gradient ) that's used to make molecules of ATP and NADPH which temporarily store and transport energy. Their energy is used in the light-independent reactions of the Calvin cycle by the enzyme rubisco to produce molecules of

1995-586: A profound effect on the economy of the countries, especially in relation to the foods and medicines introduced. The importation of rubber trees to the Singapore Botanic Garden initiated the important rubber industry of the Malay Peninsula . At this time also, teak and tea were introduced to India and breadfruit , pepper and starfruit to the Caribbean. Included in the charter of these gardens

2128-505: A pure form of carbon made by pyrolysis of wood, has a long history as a metal- smelting fuel, as a filter material and adsorbent and as an artist's material and is one of the three ingredients of gunpowder . Cellulose , the world's most abundant organic polymer, can be converted into energy, fuels, materials and chemical feedstock. Products made from cellulose include rayon and cellophane , wallpaper paste , biobutanol and gun cotton . Sugarcane , rapeseed and soy are some of

2261-526: A student of Aristotle who invented and described many of its principles and is widely regarded in the scientific community as the "Father of Botany". His major works, Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants , constitute the most important contributions to botanical science until the Middle Ages , almost seventeen centuries later. Another work from Ancient Greece that made an early impact on botany

2394-454: A useful proxy for temperature in historical climatology , and the biological impact of climate change and global warming . Palynology , the analysis of fossil pollen deposits in sediments from thousands or millions of years ago allows the reconstruction of past climates. Estimates of atmospheric CO 2 concentrations since the Palaeozoic have been obtained from stomatal densities and

2527-1010: A variety of spatial scales in groups, populations and communities that collectively constitute vegetation. Regions with characteristic vegetation types and dominant plants as well as similar abiotic and biotic factors, climate , and geography make up biomes like tundra or tropical rainforest . Herbivores eat plants, but plants can defend themselves and some species are parasitic or even carnivorous . Other organisms form mutually beneficial relationships with plants. For example, mycorrhizal fungi and rhizobia provide plants with nutrients in exchange for food, ants are recruited by ant plants to provide protection, honey bees , bats and other animals pollinate flowers and humans and other animals act as dispersal vectors to spread spores and seeds . Plant responses to climate and other environmental changes can inform our understanding of how these changes affect ecosystem function and productivity. For example, plant phenology can be

2660-628: A way of drug discovery . Plants can synthesise coloured dyes and pigments such as the anthocyanins responsible for the red colour of red wine , yellow weld and blue woad used together to produce Lincoln green , indoxyl , source of the blue dye indigo traditionally used to dye denim and the artist's pigments gamboge and rose madder . Sugar, starch , cotton, linen , hemp , some types of rope , wood and particle boards , papyrus and paper, vegetable oils , wax , and natural rubber are examples of commercially important materials made from plant tissues or their secondary products. Charcoal ,

2793-457: A wide influence on both botany and horticulture, as plants poured into it from around the world. The garden's golden age came in the 18th century, when it became the world's most richly stocked botanical garden. Its seed-exchange programme was established in 1682 and still continues today. With the increase in maritime trade , ever more plants were being brought back to Europe as trophies from distant lands, and these were triumphantly displayed in

SECTION 20

#1732858421173

2926-452: A wider range of shared characters and were widely followed. The Candollean system reflected his ideas of the progression of morphological complexity and the later Bentham & Hooker system , which was influential until the mid-19th century, was influenced by Candolle's approach. Darwin 's publication of the Origin of Species in 1859 and his concept of common descent required modifications to

3059-475: A wind break and soil. To solve the problems, he planted a mixture of large trees and shrubs e.g. Corsican Pine , Douglas Fir , Rhododendrons etc. Having done so his vision was to grow as many exotic plants as possible; this he achieved until his death in 1922. The original Inverewe Lodge was destroyed by fire in 1914 and replaced in 1937 by the current Inverewe House. The Garden covers some 20 hectares (50 acres) and has over 2,500 exotic plants and flowers. There

3192-470: A year. Historically, botanical gardens exchanged plants through the publication of seed lists (these were called Latin : Indices Seminae in the 18th century). This was a means of transferring both plants and information between botanical gardens. This system continues today, although the possibility of genetic piracy and the transmission of invasive species has received greater attention in recent times. The International Association of Botanic Gardens

3325-406: Is De materia medica , a five-volume encyclopedia about preliminary herbal medicine written in the middle of the first century by Greek physician and pharmacologist Pedanius Dioscorides . De materia medica was widely read for more than 1,500 years. Important contributions from the medieval Muslim world include Ibn Wahshiyya 's Nabatean Agriculture , Abū Ḥanīfa Dīnawarī 's (828–896)

3458-405: Is peppermint , Mentha × piperita , a sterile hybrid between Mentha aquatica and spearmint, Mentha spicata . The many cultivated varieties of wheat are the result of multiple inter- and intra- specific crosses between wild species and their hybrids. Angiosperms with monoecious flowers often have self-incompatibility mechanisms that operate between the pollen and stigma so that

3591-474: Is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek word botanē ( βοτάνη ) meaning " pasture ", " herbs " " grass ", or " fodder "; Botanē is in turn derived from boskein ( Greek : βόσκειν ), "to feed" or "to graze ". Traditionally, botany has also included the study of fungi and algae by mycologists and phycologists respectively, with

3724-476: Is a broad, multidisciplinary subject with contributions and insights from most other areas of science and technology. Research topics include the study of plant structure , growth and differentiation, reproduction , biochemistry and primary metabolism , chemical products, development , diseases , evolutionary relationships , systematics , and plant taxonomy . Dominant themes in 21st-century plant science are molecular genetics and epigenetics , which study

3857-526: Is a further 800 hectares (2,000 acres) of land managed for recreation and conservation. The garden and estate has been the property of the National Trust for Scotland since it was given to the Trust along with a generous endowment for its future upkeep by Osgood's daughter Mairi Sawyer in 1952. The garden continues to be developed by the small garden team. There are currently 10 full-time gardeners. Inverewe has

3990-483: Is closely linked to the history of botany itself. The botanical gardens of the 16th and 17th centuries were medicinal gardens, but the idea of a botanical garden changed to encompass displays of the beautiful, strange, new and sometimes economically important plant trophies being returned from the European colonies and other distant lands. Later, in the 18th century, they became more educational in function, demonstrating

4123-418: Is colourful as the bark of many rhododendrons is beautifully and delicately coloured and the collection of native and non-native trees, including Wollemi trees, add to the variety. 57°46′30″N 5°36′15″W  /  57.77500°N 5.60417°W  / 57.77500; -5.60417 This Highland location article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . This article related to

Inverewe Garden - Misplaced Pages Continue

4256-762: Is gathered by ethnobotanists. This information can relay a great deal of information on how the land once was thousands of years ago and how it has changed over that time. The goals of plant ecology are to understand the causes of their distribution patterns, productivity, environmental impact, evolution, and responses to environmental change. Plants depend on certain edaphic (soil) and climatic factors in their environment but can modify these factors too. For example, they can change their environment's albedo , increase runoff interception, stabilise mineral soils and develop their organic content, and affect local temperature. Plants compete with other organisms in their ecosystem for resources. They interact with their neighbours at

4389-511: Is inside the Parque La Carolina is a 165.5-acre (670,000 m ) park in the centre of the Quito central business district , bordered by the avenues Río Amazonas, de los Shyris, Naciones Unidas, Eloy Alfaro, and de la República. The botanical garden of Quito is a park, a botanical garden, an arboretum and greenhouses of 18,600 square meters that is planned to increase, maintain the plants of

4522-663: Is respected worldwide for the published work of its scientists, the education of horticultural students, its public programmes, and the scientific underpinning of its horticulture. In 1728, John Bartram founded Bartram's Garden in Philadelphia , one of the continent's first botanical gardens. The garden is now managed as a historical site that includes a few original and many modern specimens as well as extensive archives and restored historical farm buildings. The large number of plants needing description were often listed in garden catalogues; and at this time Carl Linnaeus established

4655-451: Is still a major foundation of modern botany. Her books Plant Anatomy and Anatomy of Seed Plants have been key plant structural biology texts for more than half a century. The discipline of plant ecology was pioneered in the late 19th century by botanists such as Eugenius Warming , who produced the hypothesis that plants form communities , and his mentor and successor Christen C. Raunkiær whose system for describing plant life forms

4788-400: Is still given to these groups by botanists, and fungi (including lichens) and photosynthetic protists are usually covered in introductory botany courses. Palaeobotanists study ancient plants in the fossil record to provide information about the evolutionary history of plants . Cyanobacteria , the first oxygen-releasing photosynthetic organisms on Earth, are thought to have given rise to

4921-444: Is still in use today. The concept that the composition of plant communities such as temperate broadleaf forest changes by a process of ecological succession was developed by Henry Chandler Cowles , Arthur Tansley and Frederic Clements . Clements is credited with the idea of climax vegetation as the most complex vegetation that an environment can support and Tansley introduced the concept of ecosystems to biology. Building on

5054-1081: Is the acquisition and dissemination of botanical knowledge. A contemporary botanic garden is a strictly protected green area, where a managing organization creates landscaped gardens and holds documented collections of living plants and/or preserved plant accessions containing functional units of heredity of actual or potential value for purposes such as scientific research, education, public display, conservation, sustainable use, tourism and recreational activities, production of marketable plant-based products and services for improvement of human well-being. Worldwide, there are now about 1800 botanical gardens and arboreta in about 150 countries (mostly in temperate regions) of which about 550 are in Europe (150 of which are in Russia ), 200 in North America , and an increasing number in East Asia. These gardens attract about 300 million visitors

5187-498: Is the study of ferns and allied plants. A number of other taxa of ranks varying from family to subgenus have terms for their study, including agrostology (or graminology) for the study of grasses, synantherology for the study of composites, and batology for the study of brambles. Study can also be divided by guild rather than clade or grade . Dendrology is the study of woody plants. Many divisions of biology have botanical subfields. These are commonly denoted by prefixing

5320-546: Is to maintain documented collections of living plants for the purposes of scientific research, conservation, display, and education, although this will depend on the resources available and the special interests pursued at each particular garden. The staff will normally include botanists as well as gardeners. Many botanical gardens offer diploma/certificate programs in horticulture, botany and taxonomy. There are many internship opportunities offered to aspiring horticulturists. As well as opportunities for students/researchers to use

5453-553: The Angiosperm Phylogeny Group to publish in 1998 a phylogeny of flowering plants, answering many of the questions about relationships among angiosperm families and species. The theoretical possibility of a practical method for identification of plant species and commercial varieties by DNA barcoding is the subject of active current research. Botany is divided along several axes. Some subfields of botany relate to particular groups of organisms. Divisions related to

Inverewe Garden - Misplaced Pages Continue

5586-495: The Book of Plants , and Ibn Bassal 's The Classification of Soils . In the early 13th century, Abu al-Abbas al-Nabati , and Ibn al-Baitar (d. 1248) wrote on botany in a systematic and scientific manner. In the mid-16th century, botanical gardens were founded in a number of Italian universities. The Padua botanical garden in 1545 is usually considered to be the first which is still in its original location. These gardens continued

5719-651: The Botanical Garden of the University of Vienna and Hortus Botanicus Leiden . Many plants were being collected from the Near East , especially bulbous plants from Turkey . Clusius laid the foundations of Dutch tulip breeding and the bulb industry, and he helped create one of the earliest formal botanical gardens of Europe at Leyden where his detailed planting lists have made it possible to recreate this garden near its original site. The hortus medicus of Leyden in 1601

5852-417: The C 4 carbon fixation pathway for photosynthesis which avoid the losses resulting from photorespiration in the more common C 3 carbon fixation pathway. These biochemical strategies are unique to land plants. Phytochemistry is a branch of plant biochemistry primarily concerned with the chemical substances produced by plants during secondary metabolism . Some of these compounds are toxins such as

5985-835: The Global Strategy for Plant Conservation by producing a range resources and publications, and by organizing international conferences and conservation programs. Communication also happens regionally. In the United States, there is the American Public Gardens Association (formerly the American Association of Botanic Gardens and Arboreta), and in Australasia there is the Botanic Gardens of Australia and New Zealand (BGANZ). The history of botanical gardens

6118-799: The Government Hill in Victoria City , Hong Kong Island . The Koishikawa Botanical Garden in Tokyo, with its origin going back to the Tokugawa shogunate 's ownership, became in 1877 part of the Tokyo Imperial University . In Sri Lanka major botanical gardens include the Royal Botanic Gardens, Peradeniya (formally established in 1843), Hakgala Botanical Gardens (1861) and Henarathgoda Botanical Garden (1876). Jardín Botánico de Quito

6251-968: The Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens , 1818; the Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne , 1845; Adelaide Botanic Gardens , 1854; and Brisbane Botanic Gardens , 1855. These were established essentially as colonial gardens of economic botany and acclimatisation. The Auburn Botanical Gardens , 1977, located in Sydney's western suburbs , are one of the popular and diverse botanical gardens in the Greater Western Sydney area. Major botanical gardens in New Zealand include Dunedin Botanic Gardens , 1863; Christchurch Botanic Gardens , 1863; Ōtari-Wilton's Bush , 1926; and Wellington Botanic Gardens , 1868. Hong Kong Botanic Gardens , 1871 (renamed Hong Kong Zoological and Botanical Gardens in 1975), up from

6384-504: The alkaloid coniine from hemlock . Others, such as the essential oils peppermint oil and lemon oil are useful for their aroma, as flavourings and spices (e.g., capsaicin ), and in medicine as pharmaceuticals as in opium from opium poppies . Many medicinal and recreational drugs , such as tetrahydrocannabinol (active ingredient in cannabis ), caffeine , morphine and nicotine come directly from plants. Others are simple derivatives of botanical natural products. For example,

6517-565: The auxin plant hormones by Kenneth V. Thimann in 1948 enabled regulation of plant growth by externally applied chemicals. Frederick Campion Steward pioneered techniques of micropropagation and plant tissue culture controlled by plant hormones . The synthetic auxin 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid or 2,4-D was one of the first commercial synthetic herbicides . 20th century developments in plant biochemistry have been driven by modern techniques of organic chemical analysis , such as spectroscopy , chromatography and electrophoresis . With

6650-626: The cell theory with Theodor Schwann and Rudolf Virchow and was among the first to grasp the significance of the cell nucleus that had been described by Robert Brown in 1831. In 1855, Adolf Fick formulated Fick's laws that enabled the calculation of the rates of molecular diffusion in biological systems. Building upon the gene-chromosome theory of heredity that originated with Gregor Mendel (1822–1884), August Weismann (1834–1914) proved that inheritance only takes place through gametes . No other cells can pass on inherited characters. The work of Katherine Esau (1898–1997) on plant anatomy

6783-444: The cellulose and lignin used to build their bodies, and secondary products like resins and aroma compounds . Plants and various other groups of photosynthetic eukaryotes collectively known as " algae " have unique organelles known as chloroplasts . Chloroplasts are thought to be descended from cyanobacteria that formed endosymbiotic relationships with ancient plant and algal ancestors. Chloroplasts and cyanobacteria contain

SECTION 50

#1732858421173

6916-427: The indigenous people of Canada in identifying edible plants from inedible plants. This relationship the indigenous people had with plants was recorded by ethnobotanists. Plant biochemistry is the study of the chemical processes used by plants. Some of these processes are used in their primary metabolism like the photosynthetic Calvin cycle and crassulacean acid metabolism . Others make specialised materials like

7049-426: The pines , and flowering plants ) and the free-sporing cryptogams including ferns , clubmosses , liverworts , hornworts and mosses . Embryophytes are multicellular eukaryotes descended from an ancestor that obtained its energy from sunlight by photosynthesis . They have life cycles with alternating haploid and diploid phases. The sexual haploid phase of embryophytes, known as the gametophyte , nurtures

7182-498: The "Father of Botany". There is some debate among science historians whether this garden was ordered and scientific enough to be considered "botanical", and suggest it more appropriate to attribute the earliest known botanical garden in Europe to the botanist and pharmacologist Antonius Castor , mentioned by Pliny the Elder in the 1st century. Though these ancient gardens shared some of

7315-408: The 16th and 17th centuries, the first plants were being imported to these major Western European gardens from Eastern Europe and nearby Asia (which provided many bulbs ), and these found a place in the new gardens, where they could be conveniently studied by the plant experts of the day. For example, Asian introductions were described by Carolus Clusius (1526–1609), who was director, in turn, of

7448-408: The 3-carbon sugar glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate (G3P). Glyceraldehyde 3-phosphate is the first product of photosynthesis and the raw material from which glucose and almost all other organic molecules of biological origin are synthesised. Some of the glucose is converted to starch which is stored in the chloroplast. Starch is the characteristic energy store of most land plants and algae, while inulin ,

7581-665: The British and Dutch, in India , South-east Asia and the Caribbean . This was also the time of Sir Joseph Banks 's botanical collections during Captain James Cook 's circumnavigations of the planet and his explorations of Oceania , which formed the last phase of plant introduction on a grand scale. There are currently about 230 tropical botanical gardens with a concentration in southern and south-eastern Asia. The first botanical garden founded in

7714-506: The Candollean system to reflect evolutionary relationships as distinct from mere morphological similarity. Botany was greatly stimulated by the appearance of the first "modern" textbook, Matthias Schleiden 's Grundzüge der Wissenschaftlichen Botanik , published in English in 1849 as Principles of Scientific Botany . Schleiden was a microscopist and an early plant anatomist who co-founded

7847-599: The Chelsea Physic Garden to the Province of Georgia in 1732 and tea into India by Calcutta Botanic Garden. The transfer of germplasm between the temperate and tropical botanical gardens was undoubtedly responsible for the range of agricultural crops currently used in several regions of the tropics. The first botanical gardens in Australia were founded early in the 19th century. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Sydney , 1816;

7980-511: The Christian conquest in 1085 CE. Ibn Bassal then founded a garden in Seville, most of its plants being collected on a botanical expedition that included Morocco, Persia, Sicily, and Egypt. The medical school of Montpelier was also founded by Spanish Arab physicians, and by 1250 CE, it included a physic garden, but the site was not given botanic garden status until 1593. Botanical gardens, in

8113-1009: The Netherlands ( Hortus Botanicus Leiden , 1590; Hortus Botanicus (Amsterdam) , 1638), Germany ( Alter Botanischer Garten Tübingen , 1535; Leipzig Botanical Garden , 1580; Botanischer Garten Jena , 1586; Botanischer Garten Heidelberg , 1593; Herrenhäuser Gärten, Hanover , 1666; Botanischer Garten der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel , 1669; Botanical Garden in Berlin , 1672), Switzerland ( Old Botanical Garden, Zürich , 1560; Basel , 1589); England ( University of Oxford Botanic Garden , 1621; Chelsea Physic Garden , 1673); Scotland ( Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh , 1670); and in France ( Jardin des plantes de Montpellier , 1593; Faculty of Medicine Garden, Paris, 1597; Jardin des Plantes , Paris, 1635), Denmark ( University of Copenhagen Botanical Garden , 1600); Sweden ( Uppsala University , 1655). During

SECTION 60

#1732858421173

8246-716: The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (1759) and Orotava Acclimatization Garden (in Spanish) , Tenerife (1788) and the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid (1755) were set up to cultivate new species returned from expeditions to the tropics; they also helped found new tropical botanical gardens. From the 1770s, following the example of the French and Spanish , amateur collectors were supplemented by official horticultural and botanical plant hunters. These botanical gardens were boosted by

8379-521: The Royal Garden set aside as a physic garden. William Aiton (1741–1793), the first curator, was taught by garden chronicler Philip Miller of the Chelsea Physic Garden whose son Charles became first curator of the original Cambridge Botanic Garden (1762). In 1759, the "Physick Garden" was planted, and by 1767, it was claimed that "the Exotick Garden is by far the richest in Europe". Gardens such as

8512-614: The Spanish invaders, not only with their appearance, but also because the indigenous Aztecs employed many more medicinal plants than did the classical world of Europe. Early medieval gardens in Islamic Spain resembled botanic gardens of the future, an example being the 11th-century Huerta del Rey garden of physician and author Ibn Wafid (999–1075 CE) in Toledo . This was later taken over by garden chronicler Ibn Bassal (fl. 1085 CE) until

8645-481: The Vatican grounds in 1447, for a garden of medicinal plants that were used to promote the teaching of botany, and this was a forerunner to the University gardens at Padua and Pisa established in the 1540s. Certainly the founding of many early botanic gardens was instigated by members of the medical profession. In the 17th century, botanical gardens began their contribution to a deeper scientific curiosity about plants. If

8778-474: The Vegetable Kingdom at the start of chapter XII noted "The first and most important of the conclusions which may be drawn from the observations given in this volume, is that generally cross-fertilisation is beneficial and self-fertilisation often injurious, at least with the plants on which I experimented." An important adaptive benefit of outcrossing is that it allows the masking of deleterious mutations in

8911-412: The above pair of categories gives rise to fields such as bryogeography (the study of the distribution of mosses). Different parts of plants also give rise to their own subfields, including xylology , carpology (or fructology) and palynology , these been the study of wood, fruit and pollen/spores respectively. Botany also overlaps on the one hand with agriculture, horticulture and silviculture, and on

9044-439: The ancestor of plants by entering into an endosymbiotic relationship with an early eukaryote, ultimately becoming the chloroplasts in plant cells. The new photosynthetic plants (along with their algal relatives) accelerated the rise in atmospheric oxygen started by the cyanobacteria , changing the ancient oxygen-free, reducing , atmosphere to one in which free oxygen has been abundant for more than 2 billion years. Among

9177-447: The base of most food chains because they use the energy from the sun and nutrients from the soil and atmosphere, converting them into a form that can be used by animals. This is what ecologists call the first trophic level . The modern forms of the major staple foods , such as hemp , teff , maize, rice, wheat and other cereal grasses, pulses , bananas and plantains, as well as hemp , flax and cotton grown for their fibres, are

9310-500: The blue-green pigment chlorophyll a . Chlorophyll a (as well as its plant and green algal-specific cousin chlorophyll b ) absorbs light in the blue-violet and orange/red parts of the spectrum while reflecting and transmitting the green light that we see as the characteristic colour of these organisms. The energy in the red and blue light that these pigments absorb is used by chloroplasts to make energy-rich carbon compounds from carbon dioxide and water by oxygenic photosynthesis ,

9443-446: The broader historical sense of botany include bacteriology , mycology (or fungology) and phycology - the study of bacteria, fungi and algae respectively - with lichenology as a subfield of mycology. The narrower sense of botany in the sense of the study of embryophytes (land plants) is disambiguated as phytology. Bryology is the study of mosses (and in the broader sense also liverworts and hornworts). Pteridology (or filicology)

9576-475: The characteristics of present-day botanical gardens, the forerunners of modern botanical gardens are generally regarded as being the medieval monastic physic gardens that originated after the decline of the Roman Empire at the time of Emperor Charlemagne (742–789 CE). These contained a hortus , a garden used mostly for vegetables, and another section set aside for specially labelled medicinal plants and this

9709-404: The characters may be artificial in keys designed purely for identification ( diagnostic keys ) or more closely related to the natural or phyletic order of the taxa in synoptic keys. By the 18th century, new plants for study were arriving in Europe in increasing numbers from newly discovered countries and the European colonies worldwide. In 1753, Carl Linnaeus published his Species Plantarum ,

9842-442: The classification systems being developed by botanists in the gardens' museums and herbaria. Botanical gardens had now become scientific collections, as botanists published their descriptions of the new exotic plants, and these were also recorded for posterity in detail by superb botanical illustrations. In this century, botanical gardens effectively dropped their medicinal function in favour of scientific and aesthetic priorities, and

9975-405: The collection for their studies. The origin of modern botanical gardens is generally traced to the appointment of botany professors to the medical faculties of universities in 16th-century Renaissance Italy, which also entailed curating a medicinal garden . However, the objectives, content, and audience of today's botanic gardens more closely resembles that of the grandiose gardens of antiquity and

10108-413: The country (Ecuador is among the 17 richest countries in the world in the native species, a study on this matter). The Ecuadorian flora classified, determines the existence of 17,000 species) Botanist Botany , also called plant science (or plant sciences ), plant biology or phytology , is the science of plant life and a branch of biology . A botanist , plant scientist or phytologist

10241-461: The developing diploid embryo sporophyte within its tissues for at least part of its life, even in the seed plants, where the gametophyte itself is nurtured by its parent sporophyte. Other groups of organisms that were previously studied by botanists include bacteria (now studied in bacteriology ), fungi ( mycology ) – including lichen -forming fungi ( lichenology ), non- chlorophyte algae ( phycology ), and viruses ( virology ). However, attention

10374-459: The earliest was the Padua botanical garden . These gardens facilitated the academic study of plants. Efforts to catalogue and describe their collections were the beginnings of plant taxonomy and led in 1753 to the binomial system of nomenclature of Carl Linnaeus that remains in use to this day for the naming of all biological species. In the 19th and 20th centuries, new techniques were developed for

10507-477: The educational garden of Theophrastus in the Lyceum of ancient Athens. The early concern with medicinal plants changed in the 17th century to an interest in the new plant imports from explorations outside Europe as botany gradually established its independence from medicine. In the 18th century, systems of nomenclature and classification were devised by botanists working in the herbaria and universities associated with

10640-419: The efforts of early humans to identify – and later cultivate – plants that were edible, poisonous, and possibly medicinal, making it one of the first endeavours of human investigation. Medieval physic gardens , often attached to monasteries , contained plants possibly having medicinal benefit. They were forerunners of the first botanical gardens attached to universities , founded from the 1540s onwards. One of

10773-529: The end of the 18th century, Kew, under the directorship of Sir Joseph Banks , enjoyed a golden age of plant hunting, sending out collectors to the South African Cape , Australia , Chile , China , Ceylon , Brazil , and elsewhere, and acting as "the great botanical exchange house of the British Empire ". From its earliest days to the present, Kew has in many ways exemplified botanic garden ideals, and

10906-453: The extensive earlier work of Alphonse de Candolle , Nikolai Vavilov (1887–1943) produced accounts of the biogeography , centres of origin , and evolutionary history of economic plants. Particularly since the mid-1960s there have been advances in understanding of the physics of plant physiological processes such as transpiration (the transport of water within plant tissues), the temperature dependence of rates of water evaporation from

11039-512: The flora being sent back to Europe from various European colonies around the globe . At this time, British horticulturalists were importing many woody plants from Britain's colonies in North America , and the popularity of horticulture had increased enormously, encouraged by the horticultural and botanical collecting expeditions overseas fostered by the directorship of Sir William Jackson Hooker and his keen interest in economic botany . At

11172-563: The fossil record. It is widely regarded as a marker for the start of land plant evolution during the Ordovician period. The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today is much lower than it was when plants emerged onto land during the Ordovician and Silurian periods. Many monocots like maize and the pineapple and some dicots like the Asteraceae have since independently evolved pathways like Crassulacean acid metabolism and

11305-451: The functional relationships between plants and their habitats  – the environments where they complete their life cycles . Plant ecologists study the composition of local and regional floras , their biodiversity , genetic diversity and fitness , the adaptation of plants to their environment, and their competitive or mutualistic interactions with other species. Some ecologists even rely on empirical data from indigenous people that

11438-434: The gardens, these systems often being displayed in the gardens as educational "order beds ". With the rapid expansion of European colonies around the globe in the late 18th century, botanic gardens were established in the tropics, and economic botany became a focus with the hub at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew , near London. Over the years, botanical gardens, as cultural and scientific organisations, have responded to

11571-444: The global carbon and water cycles and plant roots bind and stabilise soils, preventing soil erosion . Plants are crucial to the future of human society as they provide food, oxygen, biochemicals , and products for people, as well as creating and preserving soil. Historically, all living things were classified as either animals or plants and botany covered the study of all organisms not considered animals. Botanists examine both

11704-621: The important botanical questions of the 21st century are the role of plants as primary producers in the global cycling of life's basic ingredients: energy, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen and water, and ways that our plant stewardship can help address the global environmental issues of resource management , conservation , human food security , biologically invasive organisms , carbon sequestration , climate change , and sustainability . Virtually all staple foods come either directly from primary production by plants, or indirectly from animals that eat them. Plants and other photosynthetic organisms are at

11837-488: The interests of botany and horticulture . Nowadays, most botanical gardens display a mix of the themes mentioned and more; having a strong connection with the general public, there is the opportunity to provide visitors with information relating to the environmental issues being faced at the start of the 21st century, especially those relating to plant conservation and sustainability . The "New Royal Horticultural Society Dictionary of Gardening" (1999) points out that among

11970-478: The internal functions and processes within plant organelles , cells, tissues, whole plants, plant populations and plant communities. At each of these levels, a botanist may be concerned with the classification ( taxonomy ), phylogeny and evolution , structure ( anatomy and morphology ), or function ( physiology ) of plant life. The strictest definition of "plant" includes only the "land plants" or embryophytes , which include seed plants (gymnosperms, including

12103-599: The latest plant classification systems devised by botanists working in the associated herbaria as they tried to order these new treasures. Then, in the 19th and 20th centuries, the trend was towards a combination of specialist and eclectic collections demonstrating many aspects of both horticulture and botany. The idea of "scientific" gardens used specifically for the study of plants dates back to antiquity. Near-eastern royal gardens set aside for economic use or display and containing at least some plants gained by special collecting trips or military campaigns abroad, are known from

12236-403: The leaf shapes and sizes of ancient land plants . Ozone depletion can expose plants to higher levels of ultraviolet radiation-B (UV-B), resulting in lower growth rates. Moreover, information from studies of community ecology , plant systematics , and taxonomy is essential to understanding vegetation change , habitat destruction and species extinction . Inheritance in plants follows

12369-576: The leaf surface and the molecular diffusion of water vapour and carbon dioxide through stomatal apertures. These developments, coupled with new methods for measuring the size of stomatal apertures, and the rate of photosynthesis have enabled precise description of the rates of gas exchange between plants and the atmosphere. Innovations in statistical analysis by Ronald Fisher , Frank Yates and others at Rothamsted Experimental Station facilitated rational experimental design and data analysis in botanical research. The discovery and identification of

12502-576: The maintenance of biodiversity . Botany originated as herbalism , the study and use of plants for their possible medicinal properties . The early recorded history of botany includes many ancient writings and plant classifications. Examples of early botanical works have been found in ancient texts from India dating back to before 1100 BCE, Ancient Egypt , in archaic Avestan writings, and in works from China purportedly from before 221 BCE. Modern botany traces its roots back to Ancient Greece specifically to Theophrastus ( c.  371 –287 BCE),

12635-493: The major groups of organisms that carry out photosynthesis , a process that uses the energy of sunlight to convert water and carbon dioxide into sugars that can be used both as a source of chemical energy and of organic molecules that are used in the structural components of cells. As a by-product of photosynthesis, plants release oxygen into the atmosphere, a gas that is required by nearly all living things to carry out cellular respiration. In addition, they are influential in

12768-474: The mechanisms and control of gene expression during differentiation of plant cells and tissues . Botanical research has diverse applications in providing staple foods , materials such as timber , oil , rubber, fibre and drugs, in modern horticulture , agriculture and forestry , plant propagation , breeding and genetic modification , in the synthesis of chemicals and raw materials for construction and energy production, in environmental management , and

12901-504: The modern sense, developed from physic gardens , whose main purpose was to cultivate herbs for medical use as well as research and experimentation. Such gardens have a long history. In Europe, for example, Aristotle (384 BCE – 322 BCE) is said to have had a physic garden in the Lyceum at Athens, which was used for educational purposes and for the study of botany, and this was inherited, or possibly set up, by his pupil Theophrastus ,

13034-596: The number of their male sexual organs. The 24th group, Cryptogamia , included all plants with concealed reproductive parts, mosses , liverworts , ferns , algae and fungi . Botany was originally a hobby for upper-class women. These women would collect and paint flowers and plants from around the world with scientific accuracy. The paintings were used to record many species that could not be transported or maintained in other environments. Marianne North illustrated over 900 species in extreme detail with watercolor and oil paintings. Her work and many other women's botany work

13167-447: The other hand with medicine and pharmacology, giving rise to fields such as agronomy , horticultural botany, phytopathology and phytopharmacology . The study of plants is vital because they underpin almost all animal life on Earth by generating a large proportion of the oxygen and food that provide humans and other organisms with aerobic respiration with the chemical energy they need to exist. Plants, algae and cyanobacteria are

13300-404: The outcome of prehistoric selection over thousands of years from among wild ancestral plants with the most desirable characteristics. Botanists study how plants produce food and how to increase yields, for example through plant breeding , making their work important to humanity's ability to feed the world and provide food security for future generations. Botanists also study weeds, which are

13433-791: The pain killer aspirin is the acetyl ester of salicylic acid , originally isolated from the bark of willow trees, and a wide range of opiate painkillers like heroin are obtained by chemical modification of morphine obtained from the opium poppy . Popular stimulants come from plants, such as caffeine from coffee, tea and chocolate, and nicotine from tobacco. Most alcoholic beverages come from fermentation of carbohydrate -rich plant products such as barley (beer), rice ( sake ) and grapes (wine). Native Americans have used various plants as ways of treating illness or disease for thousands of years. This knowledge Native Americans have on plants has been recorded by enthnobotanists and then in turn has been used by pharmaceutical companies as

13566-654: The physicians (referred to in English as apothecaries ) delivered lectures on the Mediterranean "simples" or " officinals " that were being cultivated in the grounds. Student education was no doubt stimulated by the relatively recent advent of printing and the publication of the first herbals. All of these botanical gardens still exist, mostly in their original locations. The tradition of these Italian gardens passed into Spain Botanical Garden of Valencia , 1567) and Northern Europe , where similar gardens were established in

13699-479: The plants with a highly fermentable sugar or oil content that are used as sources of biofuels , important alternatives to fossil fuels , such as biodiesel . Sweetgrass was used by Native Americans to ward off bugs like mosquitoes . These bug repelling properties of sweetgrass were later found by the American Chemical Society in the molecules phytol and coumarin . Plant ecology is the science of

13832-486: The pollen either fails to reach the stigma or fails to germinate and produce male gametes . This is one of several methods used by plants to promote outcrossing . In many land plants the male and female gametes are produced by separate individuals. These species are said to be dioecious when referring to vascular plant sporophytes and dioicous when referring to bryophyte gametophytes . Charles Darwin in his 1878 book The Effects of Cross and Self-Fertilization in

13965-442: The polymer cutin which is found in the plant cuticle that protects land plants from drying out. Plants synthesise a number of unique polymers like the polysaccharide molecules cellulose , pectin and xyloglucan from which the land plant cell wall is constructed. Vascular land plants make lignin , a polymer used to strengthen the secondary cell walls of xylem tracheids and vessels to keep them from collapsing when

14098-545: The practical value of earlier "physic gardens", often associated with monasteries, in which plants were cultivated for suspected medicinal uses. They supported the growth of botany as an academic subject. Lectures were given about the plants grown in the gardens. Botanical gardens came much later to northern Europe; the first in England was the University of Oxford Botanic Garden in 1621. German physician Leonhart Fuchs (1501–1566)

14231-447: The private estates of the wealthy, in commercial nurseries , and in the public botanical gardens. Heated conservatories called " orangeries ", such as the one at Kew, became a feature of many botanical gardens. Industrial expansion in Europe and North America resulted in new building skills, so plants sensitive to cold were kept over winter in progressively elaborate and expensive heated conservatories and glasshouses. The 18th century

14364-551: The public for the purposes of recreation, education and research." The term tends to be used somewhat differently in different parts of the world. For example a large woodland garden with a good collection of rhododendron and other flowering tree and shrub species is very likely to present itself as a "botanical garden" if it is located in the US, but very unlikely to do so if in the UK (unless it also contains other relevant features). Very few of

14497-812: The purposes of scientific research, conservation, display and education." The following definition was produced by staff of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Hortorium of Cornell University in 1976. It covers in some detail the many functions and activities generally associated with botanical gardens: A botanical garden is a controlled and staffed institution for the maintenance of a living collection of plants under scientific management for purposes of education and research, together with such libraries, herbaria, laboratories, and museums as are essential to its particular undertakings. Each botanical garden naturally develops its own special fields of interests depending on its personnel, location, extent, available funds, and

14630-461: The rise of the related molecular-scale biological approaches of molecular biology , genomics , proteomics and metabolomics , the relationship between the plant genome and most aspects of the biochemistry, physiology, morphology and behaviour of plants can be subjected to detailed experimental analysis. The concept originally stated by Gottlieb Haberlandt in 1902 that all plant cells are totipotent and can be grown in vitro ultimately enabled

14763-536: The rubber plant was introduced to Singapore. Especially in the tropics, the larger gardens were frequently associated with a herbarium and museum of economy. The Botanical Garden of Peradeniya had considerable influence on the development of agriculture in Ceylon where the Para rubber tree ( Hevea brasiliensis ) was introduced from Kew, which had itself imported the plant from South America . Other examples include cotton from

14896-676: The same fundamental principles of genetics as in other multicellular organisms. Gregor Mendel discovered the genetic laws of inheritance by studying inherited traits such as shape in Pisum sativum ( peas ). What Mendel learned from studying plants has had far-reaching benefits outside of botany. Similarly, " jumping genes " were discovered by Barbara McClintock while she was studying maize. Nevertheless, there are some distinctive genetic differences between plants and other organisms. Species boundaries in plants may be weaker than in animals, and cross species hybrids are often possible. A familiar example

15029-717: The second millennium BCE in ancient Egypt , Mesopotamia , Crete , Mexico and China . In about 2800 BCE, the Chinese Emperor Shen Nung sent collectors to distant regions searching for plants with economic or medicinal value. It has also been suggested that the Spanish colonization of Mesoamerica influenced the history of the botanical garden as gardens in Tenochtitlan established by king Nezahualcoyotl , also gardens in Chalco (altépetl) and elsewhere, greatly impressed

15162-428: The sites used for the UK's dispersed National Plant Collection , usually holding large collections of a particular taxonomic group, would call themselves "botanic gardens". This has been further reduced by Botanic Gardens Conservation International to the following definition which "encompasses the spirit of a true botanic garden": "A botanic garden is an institution holding documented collections of living plants for

15295-450: The study of plants, including methods of optical microscopy and live cell imaging , electron microscopy , analysis of chromosome number , plant chemistry and the structure and function of enzymes and other proteins . In the last two decades of the 20th century, botanists exploited the techniques of molecular genetic analysis , including genomics and proteomics and DNA sequences to classify plants more accurately. Modern botany

15428-471: The study of plants. In 1665, using an early microscope, Polymath Robert Hooke discovered cells (a term he coined) in cork , and a short time later in living plant tissue. During the 18th century, systems of plant identification were developed comparable to dichotomous keys , where unidentified plants are placed into taxonomic groups (e.g. family, genus and species) by making a series of choices between pairs of characters . The choice and sequence of

15561-502: The study of these three groups of organisms remaining within the sphere of interest of the International Botanical Congress . Nowadays, botanists (in the strict sense) study approximately 410,000 species of land plants , including some 391,000 species of vascular plants (of which approximately 369,000 are flowering plants ) and approximately 20,000 bryophytes . Botany originated in prehistory as herbalism with

15694-404: The system of binomial nomenclature which greatly facilitated the listing process. Names of plants were authenticated by dried plant specimens mounted on card (a hortus siccus or garden of dried plants) that were stored in buildings called herbaria , these taxonomic research institutions being frequently associated with the botanical gardens, many of which by then had "order beds" to display

15827-417: The term "botanic garden" came to be more closely associated with the herbarium, library (and later laboratories) housed there than with the living collections – on which little research was undertaken. The late 18th and early 19th centuries were marked by the establishment of tropical botanical gardens as a tool of colonial expansion (for trade and commerce and, secondarily, science) mainly by

15960-401: The terms of its charter. It may include greenhouses, test grounds, an herbarium, an arboretum, and other departments. It maintains a scientific as well as a plant-growing staff, and publication is one of its major modes of expression. This broad outline is then expanded: The botanic garden may be an independent institution, a governmental operation, or affiliated to a college or university. If

16093-790: The tropics was the Pamplemousses Botanical Garden in Mauritius , established in 1735 to provide food for ships using the port, but later trialling and distributing many plants of economic importance. This was followed by the West Indies ( Saint Vincent and the Grenadines Botanic Gardens , 1764) and in 1786 by the Acharya Jagadish Chandra Bose Botanical Garden in Calcutta , India founded during

16226-526: The use of genetic engineering experimentally to knock out a gene or genes responsible for a specific trait, or to add genes such as GFP that report when a gene of interest is being expressed. These technologies enable the biotechnological use of whole plants or plant cell cultures grown in bioreactors to synthesise pesticides , antibiotics or other pharmaceuticals , as well as the practical application of genetically modified crops designed for traits such as improved yield. Modern morphology recognises

16359-510: The various kinds of organizations known as botanical gardens, there are many that are in modern times public gardens with little scientific activity, and it cited a tighter definition published by the World Wildlife Fund and IUCN when launching the "Botanic Gardens Conservation Strategy" in 1989: "A botanic garden is a garden containing scientifically ordered and maintained collections of plants, usually documented and labelled, and open to

16492-485: The word plant (e.g. plant taxonomy, plant ecology, plant anatomy, plant morphology, plant systematics, plant ecology), or prefixing or substituting the prefix phyto- (e.g. phytochemistry , phytogeography ). The study of fossil plants is palaeobotany . Other fields are denoted by adding or substituting the word botany (e.g. systematic botany ). Phytosociology is a subfield of plant ecology that classifies and studies communities of plants. The intersection of fields from

16625-696: The world, and so on; there may be glasshouses or shadehouses , again with special collections such as tropical plants , alpine plants , or other exotic plants that are not native to that region. Most are at least partly open to the public, and may offer guided tours, public programming such as workshops, courses, educational displays, art exhibitions , book rooms, open-air theatrical and musical performances, and other entertainment. Botanical gardens are often run by universities or other scientific research organizations, and often have associated herbaria and research programmes in plant taxonomy or some other aspect of botanical science. In principle, their role

16758-439: Was a perfect square divided into quarters for the four continents, but by 1720, though, it was a rambling system of beds, struggling to contain the novelties rushing in, and it became better known as the hortus academicus . His Exoticorum libri decem (1605) is an important survey of exotic plants and animals that is still consulted today. The inclusion of new plant introductions in botanic gardens meant their scientific role

16891-552: Was called the herbularis or hortus medicus —more generally known as a physic garden, and a viridarium or orchard. These gardens were probably given impetus when Charlemagne issued a capitulary , the Capitulary de Villis, which listed 73 herbs to be used in the physic gardens of his dominions. Many of these were found in British gardens even though they only occurred naturally in continental Europe, demonstrating earlier plant introduction. Pope Nicholas V set aside part of

17024-547: Was formed in 1954 as a worldwide organisation affiliated to the International Union of Biological Sciences . More recently, coordination has also been provided by Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), which has the mission "To mobilise botanic gardens and engage partners in securing plant diversity for the well-being of people and the planet". BGCI has over 700 members – mostly botanic gardens – in 118 countries, and strongly supports

17157-623: Was marked by introductions from the Cape of South Africa – including ericas , geraniums , pelargoniums , succulents, and proteaceous plants – while the Dutch trade with the Dutch East Indies resulted in a golden era for the Leiden and Amsterdam botanical gardens and a boom in the construction of conservatories. The Royal Gardens at Kew were founded in 1759, initially as part of

17290-638: Was now widening, as botany gradually asserted its independence from medicine. In the mid to late 17th century, the Paris Jardin des Plantes was a centre of interest with the greatest number of new introductions to attract the public. In England , the Chelsea Physic Garden was founded in 1673 as the "Garden of the Society of Apothecaries". The Chelsea garden had heated greenhouses , and in 1723 appointed Philip Miller (1691–1771) as head gardener . He had

17423-399: Was one of "the three German fathers of botany", along with theologian Otto Brunfels (1489–1534) and physician Hieronymus Bock (1498–1554) (also called Hieronymus Tragus). Fuchs and Brunfels broke away from the tradition of copying earlier works to make original observations of their own. Bock created his own system of plant classification. Physician Valerius Cordus (1515–1544) authored

17556-412: Was the beginning of popularizing botany to a wider audience. Increasing knowledge of plant anatomy , morphology and life cycles led to the realisation that there were more natural affinities between plants than the artificial sexual system of Linnaeus. Adanson (1763), de Jussieu (1789), and Candolle (1819) all proposed various alternative natural systems of classification that grouped plants using

17689-442: Was the investigation of the local flora for its economic potential to both the colonists and the local people. Many crop plants were introduced by or through these gardens – often in association with European botanical gardens such as Kew or Amsterdam – and included cloves , tea , coffee , breadfruit, cinchona , sugar , cotton , palm oil and Theobroma cacao (for chocolate). During these times,

#172827