Introduction
Botany, popularly known as plant science, plant biology or phytology, is the science of plant life and a branch of biology. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek word βοτάνη (botanē) meaning "pasture", "grass", or "fodder"; βοτάνη is in turn derived from βόσκειν (boskein), "to feed" or "to graze". Plants absorb carbon-dioxide and release oxyden through the process called Photosynthesis. Thus, The study of plants is vital and they support almost all animal and human life on Earth by generating a large proportion of the oxygen. Plants are the food that provide humans and other organisms with aerobic respiration with the chemical energy they need to exist. The article Botany Important Terms lists important terms related to Botany.
Terms
All foods on the planet earth come either directly from primary production by plants, or indirectly from animals that eat them. Plants and other photosynthetic organisms are at 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 maize, rice, wheat and other cereal grasses, pulses, bananas and plantains, as well as flax and cotton grown for their fibres, are the outcome of prehistoric selection over thousands of years from among wild ancestral plants with the most desirable characteristics.
Botany Important Terms - Important Terms Related to Botany.
| Botany Important Terms | Explanation |
|---|---|
| Acid | It is a substance which release hydrogen ions in water aand has a pH less than 7, e.g. Hydrochloric acid in the human stomach. |
| Adolescence | It is the period in the human life cycle between puberty and maturity. |
| Additive | In food technology, any natural or artificial chemical added to prolong the shelf life of processed foods (salt or nitrates), alter the colour or flavour of food, or minerals). |
| Aerobe | It is an organisation which requires oxygen to survive. |
| Agar | It is a jelly obtained from seaweeds which is used as a medium for culturing bacteria. |
| Algae | A large group of primitive plants, mostly aquatic and capable of photosynthesis. |
| Allogamy | It is cross-fertilization. |
| Anatomy | It is the study of the structure of the body and its components parts, especially the human body, as distinguished form physiology, which is the study of bodily functions. |
| Antibiotic | It is a substance, synthesizes by micro organism, which damages or kills other micro organism. |
| Anther | In a flower, the upper part of a stamen containing pollen grains. |
| Aquatic | It means living in water. All life originated in the early oceans. |
| Asexual reproduction | It is reproduction in which new organisms are formed a single parent without gamete production. |
| Autogamy | It means self fertilization. |
| Autoclave | It is a pressure cooker used for the sterilization of materials. |
| Auxins | These are plant hormones which control many aspects of plant growth. |
| Baermann funnel | It is an apparatus used to isolate organisms living in soil water, e.g. algae protozoa. |
| Balanced diet | It is the diet that includes carbohydrated, protein, fat, vitamins, water, minerals and roughage. |
| Benthos | These are the flora and fauna of the bottom of oceans and lakes. |
| Beriberi | It is inflammation of the nerve endings, mostly occurring in the tropics and resulting from a deficiency of vitamin B (thiamine). |
| Biology | It is the study of living things. There are many specializations including cytology (the study of cells), zoology (the study of animals), and ecology (the study of the environment). |
| Biotechnology | It is the industrial use of living organisms to manufacture food, drugs or other products. |
| Biofuel | It is a kind of fuel which is made from natural materials or waste. |
| Biomass | It is the total weight of all the organisms in a particular habitat. |
| Biosphere | It is the entire zone of air, land and water at the surface of the earth that is occupied by living things. |
| Bulb | It is an organ of storages and vegetative reproduction. |
| Caffeine | It is a mildly addictive alkaloid found in a number of plants, such as tea, coffee and cola. |
| Capillary action | It is the spontaneous movement of liquids up or down narrow tubes such as plant xylem vessels or the spaces existing between soil particles. |
| Canines | These are sharp pointed tearing teeth near the front of the mouth used for killing prey and ripping of pieces of food. |
| Cannabis | It is the source of a fibre and drugs like hashish and marijuana. Also called the Indian hemp or bhang plant. |
| Cartilage | It is a flexible bluish-white connective tissue made up of the protein collagen. |
| Casein | It is the main protein of milk, from which it can be separated by the action of acid, the enzyme rennin, or bacteria (souring); It is also the main component of cheese. |
| Carpel | It is the female reproductive organ of a flower (megas-poprophyII) bearing the ovules which mature into seeds after fertilization. |
| Cell | It is the smallest functional and structural unit of all living organisms. |
| Cereal | It is the grass grown for its edible starch seeds. The term cereal refers primarily to barley and wheat, but may also refer to oats, maize, rye, millet and rice. |
| Chlorophyll | It is the green coloured pigment university found in plants, responsible for capturing the energy for photosynthesis. |
| Clavicle | It is the collar bone, in humans, it is vulnerable to fracture. |
| Cornea | It is the transparent front section of the eye. The cornea is curved and behaves as a fixed lens, so that light entering the eye is partly focused before it reaches the lends. |
| Corolla | It is a collective name for the petals of a flower. |
| Death rate | It is the number of deaths, measured in the human population as the number of deaths in one year per 1000 of population. |
| Deciduous | These are trees and shrubs that shed their leaves before the onset of winter or a dry season. |
| Defoliant | It is a chemical sprayed on plants that causes leaves to fall of prematurely. |
| Desertification | It is the natural or man made conversation of arable or forest land into barren deserts. |
| Down’s syndrome | It is a human abnormality caused by a mutation in which the ovum has an extra chromosome. |
| Ecology | It is the study of structure and function of nature. |
| Ectotherm | It is a cold-blooded animal, such as a lizard, that relies on external warmth to raise its body temperature so that it can become active. |
| Egestion | It is the removal of undigested food or faeces from the gut. |
| Enzyme | It is a biological catalyst produced in cells and capable of speeding up the chemical reactions necessary for life by converting one molecule (substrate) into another. |
| Epidermis | It is the outermost layers of cells on an organism’s body. |
| Faeces | These are remains of food and other debris passed out of the digestive tract of animals. |
| Fallopian | It is a tube or oviduct in mammals one of the two tubes that carry ova (eggs) from the ovary to the uterus. |
| Fibrin | It is an insoluble blood protein used by the body to stop bleeding. |
| Fossil | These are remains or traces of animal and plant life of the past found embedded in rock. |
| Fossil fuel | It is the fuel such as coal, oil and natural gas. These are remains of organism embedded in the surface of the earth. |
| Fungi | These are primitive members of the plant family. |
| Fungus | It is a kind of living thing, a simple plant which cannot make its own food. |
| Grafting | It is the process of uniting parts of two plants to form a single plant. |
| Habitat | It is the locality or external environment in which a plant or animal lives. |
| Haploid | It is an organism or structure having a single set of unpaired chromosomes. |
| Herbarium | It is an organized collection of plant specimens for identification and reference purposes. |
| Hermaphrodite | It is an organism having both male and female reproductive organs in the same individual. |
| Horticulture | It is a branch of agriculture dealing with garden crops, generally fruits, vegetables and ornamentals. |
| Iris | It is the structure in the vertebrate eye which controls the size of the pupil and hence the amount of light entering the eye. |
| Metabolism | It describes all the change that happens inside living things. |
| Ossicles | These are the three tiny linked bones in the mammalian middle ear. |
| Ovule | It is a somewhat oval body attached to the ovary wall in a flower which matures into a seed after fertilization. |
| Parasitism | It is a biological association between organisms in which one, the parasite, benefits at the expense of the other, the host. |
| Palate | It is in mammals, the ceiling of the mouth. |
| Predator | It is an animal that feeds on other animals which are called the prey. |
| Radiocarbon dating | It is the method of finding out the age of fossils by determining the amount of radiocarbon remaining in them. |
| Retina | It is light-sensitive tissue lining the interior of the vertebrate eye, and consisting of two types of cells. |
| Rhizome | It is an organ of vegetative reproduction in flowering plants consisting of a horizontal underground stem growing from a parent plant. |
| Root | It is part of a flowering plant that normally grows down into the soil. |
| Savannah | It is a grassland with scattered trees. |
| Saprophyte | It is an organism that feeds on dead and decaying plants and animals, causing decomposition. |
| Short sight | It is Myopia. |
| Transplantation | It is the relocation of seedlings from nursery beds to the actual site of plantation. |
| Tropism | It is a plant growth movement in response to a stimulus, for example, light. |
| Tuber | It is an organ of vegetative reproduction in flowering plants. |