BOTANY #1

an introduction to botany
Plant, Scientific study, Concepts

Mochammad Roviq
Copyright 2010
Why must we study plant or crop?

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 Literature
• Mauseth, J. D. 1998. Botany : An Introduction to
Plant Biology. Jones & Bartlett Publishers, Inc.
• Stern, Jansky, Bidlack. 2003. Introductory Plant
Biology, Ninth Edition. The McGraw−Hill
Companies
• Lack, A.J. and D.E. Evans. 2005. Plant Biology –
instants note. BIOS Scientific Publishers Ltd.
• Campbell, N. A. 2008. Biology, Eight Edition.
Pearson Education, Inc.

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 BOTANY ?
• Botany is the scientific study of
plants.
• Concepts "plants" and "scientific
study."
• What is a plant ?
• Plants have so many types and
variations that a simple definition
has many exceptions, and a
definition that includes all plants
and excludes all nonplants may
be too complicated to be useful.
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 What is a PLANT ?
• Most plants have green • But you can think of
leaves, stems, roots, and exceptions immediately.
flowers (Fig. 1.1). • Conifers such as pine,
spruce, and fir have
cones rather than
flowers (Fig. 1.2), and
many cacti and
succulents do not appear
to have leaves.
Figure 1.1 This morning glory (Ipomoea) is
obviously a flowering plant. It is a vine
with long, slender stems and simple
leaves that occur in pairs. It has an
extensive root system, not visible here
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 Is it a plant ?
• But both conifers
and succulents are
obviously plants
because they
closely resemble
organisms that
unquestionably Figure 1.2 Conifers, like this spruce (Picea),
produce seeds in cones; the conifers, together
are plants with the flowering plants and a few other
groups, are known as seed plants

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 Is it a plant ?
• Similarly, ferns and mosses (Figs. 1.3 and 1.4)
are easily recognized as plants.

Figure 1.3 Ferns have several Figure 1.4 Of all terrestrial plants,
features in common with flowering mosses have the least in common with
plants; they have leaves, stems, and flowering plants. They have structures
roots. However, they never produce called "leaves" and "stems," but these
seeds, and they have neither flowers are not the same as in flowering plants.
nor wood MRQ 2010
They have no roots at all.
 Is it a plant ?
• Fungi, such as
mushrooms (Fig. 1.5)
and puffballs, were
included in the plant
kingdom because
they are immobile
Figure 1.5 Fungi such as these
and produce spores, mushrooms are not considered to be
plants. They are never green and
which function cannot obtain their energy from
somewhat like seeds. sunlight. Also, their tissues and
physiology are quite different from
those of plants.
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 Is it a plant ?
• Algae are more
problematical. One
group, the green
algae (Fig. 1.6), are
similar to plants in
biochemistry and
cell structure, but Figure 1.6 Algae do not look much like plants,
they also have but many aspects of their biochemistry and
cellular organization are very similar to those
many significant of plants. Some of the green algae were the
ancestors of land plants; although not
differences. considered to be true plants, they are
obviously closely related to plants
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 What is a Scientific Method ?
• The concept of a scientific study can
be understood by examining earlier
approaches to studying nature.
• Until the 15th century, three
principal methods for analyzing and
explaining the universe and its
phenomena were used: religion,
metaphysics, and speculative
philosophy

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 Religious methods
• The universe is assumed either to be created by or to
contain deities.
• The important feature is that the actions of gods
cannot be studied:
• Agricultural studies would be useless because some
years crops might flourish or fail because of weather
or disease, but in other years crop failure might be due
to a god's intervention (a miracle) to reward or punish
people.
• A fundamental principle of all religions is faith: People
must believe in the god without physical proof of its
existence or actions

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 Metaphysical system
• Supernatural, hidden forces that can never be
observed or studied.
• The natural processes of physics and
chemistry are believed to be controlled by
unknown and unknowable forces.
• Many people still believe in metaphysics
without realizing it: accurate horoscopes, and
reliable methods for picking the winning
numbers in a lottery

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 Speculative philosophy
• Greek philosophers.
• Analyze the world involved thinking about it logically.
• Develop logical explanations for simple observations,
then followed the logic as far as possible.
• Did not involve verification; philosophical predictions
were made, but no actual experiment or observation
was performed to see if they were correct.
• A problem with this method is that often several
alternative conclusions are equally plausible logically;
only experimentation reveals which is actually true.

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 The scientific method
Starting in the 1400s several fundamental
tenets were established:
• All accepted information can be
derived only from carefully
documented and controlled
observations or experiments
• Only phenomena and objects that can
be observed and studied are dealt
with;
• All proposed explanations of natural
phenomena must be tested and
verified;
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Scientific studies
• Begin with a series of
observations, followed by a period
of experimentation mixed with
further observation and analysis.
• At some point, a hypothesis, or
model, is constructed to account
for the observations

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Example
• A pair of simple alternative
hypotheses: (1) Plants need
light to grow. (2) Plants do not
need light to grow.
• The experimental testing may involve the
comparison of several plants outdoors, some in
light and others heavily shaded, or it may involve
several plants indoors, some in the normal gloom
and others illuminated by a window or a skylight.
• Such experiments give results consistent with
hypothesis 1; hypothesis 2 would be rejected
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Hypothesis to a theory
• A hypothesis must continue
to be tested in various ways.
• Must be consistent with
further observations and
experiments,
• Must be able to predict the
results of future experiments
• If a hypothesis continues to
match observations, it may
come to be called a theory
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Areas Where the Scientific Method Is
Inappropriate
• Example : Science can study, measure, analyze,
and describe the factors that cause people to kill
each other or to be racist or sexist, and it can
predict the outcome of these actions.
• But science cannot say if such actions are right or
wrong, moral or immoral
• It more important to have well-developed
moral/religius and philosophical systems for
assessing the appropriateness of various actions

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Using Concepts to
Understand Plants
• These concepts will make
plant biology more easily
understoodthe numerous
facts, figures, names, and data
will be less overwhelming
when you realize that they all
fit into the patterns governed
by a few fundamental
concepts
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 Fundamental concepts of
Plant
1. Plant metabolism is based on the principles
of chemistry and physics
2. Plants must have a means of storing and
using information
3. Plants reproduce, passing their genes and
information on to their descendants
4. Genes, and the information they contain,
change
5. Plants must survive in their own
environment
6. Plants are highly integrated organisms
7. An individual plant is the temporary result of
the interaction of genes and environment
8. Plants do not have purpose or
decision-making
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Figure 1.9 (a) The seeds of this
tomato (Lycopersicon) have
received, in the form of genes,
the information necessary to
produce a new tomato plant,
whereas the peas
(b) have received from their parents the
information for growing into pea plants.
Each type of plant differs from other
types in the information that it carries.
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• Figure 1.10 (a) A plant produces numerous offspring, many of which
resemble it strongly (b). Mutations may occur that cause, for instance,
leaves to be malformed and poorly shaped for photosynthesis (c); most
or all of these mutants die and do not reproduce. The normal plants
continue to reproduce (b and d), but another mutation may occur that
causes the leaves to be larger and more efficient at photosynthesis (e).
These may grow so well that theyMRQcrowd
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out the original parental types,
and the plant population finally contains only the type with large leaves.
DIVERSIFICATION OF
PLANT STUDY

• Plant anatomy, which is concerned

chiefly with the internal structure of
plants, was established through the
efforts of several scientific pioneers
• Plant physiology, which is concerned
with plant function . including how
plants conduct materials internally;
how temperature, light, and water
are involved in growth; why plants
flower; and how plant growth
regulatory substances are produced,
to mention just a few.
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 Plant taxonomy
• Plant taxonomy (also called plant
systematics), which is the oldest
branch of plant study, began in
antiquity. Plant taxonomists often
specialize in certain groups of
plants.
• For example, pteridologists
specialize in the study of ferns,
while bryologists study mosses
and plants with similar life cycles.

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 Plant geography, ecology &
morphology
• Plant geography, the study of how
and why plants are distributed
where they are
• Plant ecology, which is the study of
the interaction of plants with one
another and with their environment
• Plant morphology, the study of the
form and structure of plants,

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 Genetics
• Genetics, the science of
heredity, was founded by the
Austrian monk Gregor Mendel
(1822–1884), who performed
classic experiments with pea
plants. Today, various branches
of genetics include plant
breeding, which has greatly
improved yields and quality of
crop plants, and genetic
engineering
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Cytology
• Cell biology (previously
called cytology), the science
of cell structure and
function, received a boost
from the discovery of how
cells multiply and how their
various components perform
and integrate a variety of
functions, including that of
sexual reproduction

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 Ethnobotany
• Economic Botany and ethnobotany, which involve
practical uses of plants and plant products, had their
origin in antiquity as humans discovered, used, and
eventually cultivated plants for food, fiber, medicines,
and other purposes

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 Summary
1. It is difficult to define a plant. It is more
important to develop a familiarity with
plants and understand how they differ from
animals, fungi, protists, and prokaryotes.
The differences are presented in later
chapters.
2. The scientific method requires that all
information be gathered through
documented, repeatable observations and
experiments. It rejects any concept that can
never be examined, and it requires that all
hypotheses be tested and be consistent
with all relevant observations.

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3. Science and religion address
completely different kinds of
problems. Science cannot solve
moral problems; religion cannot
explain physical processes.
4. Living organisms have evolved by
natural selection. As organisms
reproduce mutations cause some
offspring to be less fit, some to be
more fit. Those whose features are
best suited for the environment
grow and reproduce best and leave
more offpsring than do those that
are poorly adapted.
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5. For any particular environment,
several types of adaptation can
be successful.
6. Our knowledge of the world is
incomplete and inaccurate; as
scientific studies continue,
incompleteness diminishes and
inaccuracies are corrected.

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 BAHAN UTS
• Introduction to botani (1x)
• Plant Cell
• Plant Tissue
• Cell development
• Plant structure
• Plant systematics

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• TERIMAKASIH

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