βοτάνη

Ancient Greek βοτάνη (botánē) meant herb, grass, pasture plant—the humble vegetation that fed livestock and flavored food. The word derived from boskein (to feed, to graze). Theophrastus, a student of Aristotle, wrote the first systematic works on plants around 300 BCE: Enquiry into Plants and On the Causes of Plants. He is called the father of botany, though he never used the word.

The term botany (from botanical, from Late Latin botanicus) entered English in the seventeenth century as the study of plants professionalized. Carl Linnaeus published Species Plantarum in 1753, establishing binomial nomenclature—the two-name system (genus + species) still used today. Linnaeus classified over 7,700 plant species, and his system transformed botany from description to taxonomy.

Botany was one of the few sciences open to women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, because plants were considered a genteel subject. Women like Maria Sibylla Merian, Jane Colden, and Marianne North made significant contributions to botanical illustration, classification, and field collection at a time when other sciences excluded them. The modesty of the subject—just plants—became a back door to scientific careers.

Modern botany encompasses molecular biology, genetics, ecology, and pharmacology. About 25 percent of all pharmaceutical drugs derive from plant compounds. The rosy periwinkle from Madagascar produces vincristine, used to treat childhood leukemia. Aspirin comes from willow bark. A Greek word for pasture grass now names a science that saves millions of lives.