Botany Lecture Midterms
One of the major symptoms of plant blindness is the
tendency to overlook plants, either because of a lack of
knowledge about these organisms, their visual
homogeneity, their generally non-threatening nature or
the lack of visual cues such as movement of rapid
changes.
Application of Botany in Veterinary Medicine
- Study on phytochemicals
- Plant derived products for animal health
- Forage crops
- Ethnoveterinary therapeutic practices
- Poisonous plants
- And many more
Introduction to Botany
Levels of Biological Organization
- Life emerges through organization of various
levels
- With addition of each new level, novel
properties emerge called emergent properties
Cells as the basic unit of life
- Two distinct groups of cells exist
- Prokaryotic
- Simple and small
- Ex. bacteria
- Eukaryotic
- Possess organelles separated
by membranes
- Ex. plants, animals, fungi
Characteristics of Life
1. Order
2. regulation
3. Growth and development
4. Energy processing
5. Response to the environment
6. Reproduction
7. Evolutionary adaptation
Diversity of Life
Eukaryota
- Plantae, protista, fungi, animalia
Prokaryota
- Eubacteria, archaebacteria
Taxonomic classification
- Domain
- Kingdom
- Phylum
- Class
- Order
- Family
- Genus
- Species
Evolution of Life
1. Population with varied inherited traits
2. Elimination of individuals with certain traits
3. Reproduction of survivors
Botany as a Science
- From the greek word botane which means
plant or herb
- Scientific study of plants
Basic Concepts
- Plant metabolism is based on the principles of
chemistry and physics
- Plants must have a means of a storing and
using information
- Plants reproduce, passing their genes and
information on their descendants.
- Genes, and the information they contain,
change.
- Plants must survive in their own environment
- Plants are highly integrated organisms
- An individual plant is the temporary results of
the interaction of genes and environment
- Pants do not have decision-making capacity
Branches of Botany
●Plant anatomy - the structure of plants
●Plant genetics - plant heredity
●Ecology - the distribution of plants throughout
the world, and why certain species grow in
certain places
●Palaeobotany - plant evolution and fossil
remains
●Plant physiology - plant metabolism
●Plant pathology - plant diseases
Plants can be studied at many levels
●Molecular level - biochemical, molecular, and
genetic functions of plants
●Cellular, tissue, and organelle - anatomy and
physiology
●Community and population level - interactions
with species, with other species, and with the
environment
Importance of Plants
- Photosynthesis sustains life on earth
