Botanist
A botanist is a scientist who studies plants, including flowering plants, and plant-like things such as moss and seaweed. Botany is a scientific study of plants along with their growth, structure, evolution, and uses.
Botanists may specialize in certain areas of botany. Some important areas of study include:
- Plant taxonomy
- Plant ecology
- Chemical biology
- Photosynthesis, the process that turns carbon dioxide from the air into food using sunlight
- Apoptosis, what makes a cell "decide" to die. This study area has been important for cancer research.
Notable botanists
Botanist Media
The fruit of Myristica fragrans, a species native to Indonesia, is the source of two valuable spices, the red aril (mace) enclosing the dark brown nutmeg.
An engraving of the cells of cork, from Robert Hooke's Micrographia, 1665
Echeveria glauca in a Connecticut greenhouse. Botany uses Latin names for identification; here, the specific name glauca means blue.
Class of alpine botany in Switzerland, 1936
Micropropagation of transgenic plants
Botany involves the recording and description of plants, such as this herbarium specimen of the lady fern Athyrium filix-femina.
The food we eat comes directly or indirectly from plants such as rice.
Example of paper chromatography of chlorophyll (extracted by spinach leaves) with organic solvent
The nodules of Medicago italica contain the nitrogen fixing bacterium Sinorhizobium meliloti. The plant provides the bacteria with nutrients and an anaerobic environment, and the bacteria fix nitrogen for the plant.[1]
Venus's fly trap, Dionaea muscipula, showing the touch-sensitive insect trap in action
- ↑ Campbell and others 2008, p. 794.