Learn Botany

Botany is the branch of biology that deals with the study of plants, including their structure, properties, and biochemical processes. Also included are plant classification and the study of plant diseases and of interactions with the environment. The principles and findings of botany have provided the base for such applied sciences as agriculture, horticulture, and forestry.

Plants were of paramount importance to early humans, who depended upon them as sources of food, shelter, clothing, medicine, ornament, tools, and magic. Today it is known that, in addition to their practical and economic values, green plants are indispensable to all life on Earth.

Plants are predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, the plant kingdom encompassed all living things that were not animals, and included algae and fungi; however, all current definitions of Plantae exclude the fungi and some algae, as well as the prokaryotes.

The Plant List contains a working list of plants of the world. The species included are grouped into 17,020 genera, 642 families and major groups.

You can use the Browse function to explore the taxonomic hierarchy embedded within The Plant List.

Either work down the taxonomic hierarchy from Major Group (to find out which Families belong to each), to Family (to work out which Genera belong to each) or Genus (to find out which Species belong to each).

Or from within the taxonomic hierarchy move upwards so as to discover, for example, to which Family a particular Genus belongs.

Kingdom Plantae is broadly composed of four evolutionarily related groups: bryophytes (mosses), (seedless vascular plants), gymnosperms (cone bearing seed plants), and angiosperms (flowering seed plants).