THE HISTORY OF Botany

In 287 Aristotle and Theophrastus were contemporaries in that period and both of them identified and described them. The first better-known work on plant studies is ‘De Historia Plantarum’ and for his research on botany Theophrastus was hailed as the “Father of botany”. Aristotle worked on plants at that time but his studies in animals got popularity.

A.D.60:

Dioscorides wrote De Materia Medica. This book is a description of a thousand medicines, the majority of which came from plants. Before the invention of the compound microscope, it remained as the guidebook on medicines in the Western world for 1500 years

In 1585 Rembert Dodoens, a Flemish physician and botanist contributed to botany by writing his book included “Stirpium Historiae Peptides Sex’. The year 1637 John Tradescant the younger, took a voyage from England to Virginia and there he collected a variety of flowers, plants, and shells. In 2008 Jennifer Potter wrote a book named, ‘The Curious Lives and Adventures of the John Tradescants’ describing the journey and the collection.1640 Johannes van Helmont was the first to measure how much water a tree uptake. He researched for five years with trees and finally concluded that water helps to grow a tree.

The year 1665 Robert Hooke He used a microscope to have a deep look at a piece of cork. He sees many tiny chambers there and names them cells. In his book ‘Micrographia’, he publishes cells, fleas, and other small creatures' sketches. In 1673 The Worshipful Society of Apothecaries started the Chelsea Physic Garden, an educational institution in London for apprentices who wanted to learn how to grow medicinal plants. Year 1674 to examine blood, insects, yeasts and many other tiny objects, Anton van Leeuwenhoek made a simple microscope with one lens. Microscope gave him the scope to find out bacteria for the first time. He modified his creation and the magnification rate was 270 diameters. With this, he observed algae, protozoa, and other one-celled organisms. Truly he added a new dimension in biology and for this, he is often regarded as the father of biology. 1682 Nehemiah Grew, an English botanist and physician observed that plants reproduce sexually and he wrote down it in his book “Anatomy of Plants.” His 1st book on plant anatomy was titled “The Anatomy of Vegetable Begun” (1672). 1686 John Ray was an English naturalist who worked relentlessly on botany, zoology, and natural theology. His ‘Historia Plantarum’, was an important step towards modern taxonomy. In this book, he has classified plants. We know Rudolf Camerarius for his establishment of plant’s sexuality in his book, ‘De Sexu Plantarum Epistola’. In this book, he described that ovules of plants could not turn into seeds from the female style only. He further described that it needed an ovary to be prepared by the pollen from the stamens, the male sexual organs of the plant. 1716 Thomas Fairchild was the first to create a human-made hybrid plant. He brushed with feather pollen from a sweet William over the stigma of a carnation to create it. 1727 Plant physiology was not science until Stephen Hales established it. In his ‘Vegetable Staticks’, he illustrated his experiments dealing with the nutrition and respiration of plants. He was able to measure the area, mass, volume, temperature, pressure, and even gravity in plants.