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Where does the word botanique come from?
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A botanist, plant scientist or phytologist is a scientist who specialises in this field. The term "botany" comes from the Ancient Greek word βοτάνη ( botanē) meaning "pasture", "herbs" "grass", or "fodder"; βοτάνη is in turn derived from βόσκειν ( boskein ), "to feed" or "to graze ".
English translation of 'botanique' Word Frequency. botanique. Word forms: botanique, FEM botanique. adjective. botanic. le jardin botanique the botanic gardens. Collins Beginner’s French-English Dictionary © HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved. Word Frequency. la botanique. feminine noun. botany.
noun. botany [noun] the scientific study of plants. He is Professor of Botany at McGill University. botanique. adjective. botanical [adjective] botanical research. (Translation of botanique from the PASSWORD French-English Dictionary © 2014 K Dictionaries Ltd) Browse. bosser. bosseur. bossu. botanique. botaniste. botte de caoutchouc. botter.
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botany, 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: through the process of photosynthesis, plants transform energy from the Sun into the chemical energy of food, which makes all life possible. A second unique and important capacity of green plants is the formation and release of oxygen as a by-product of photosynthesis. The oxygen of the atmosphere, so absolutely essential to many forms of life, represents the accumulation of over 3,500,000,000 years of photosynthesis by green plants and algae.
Although the many steps in the process of photosynthesis have become fully understood only in recent years, even in prehistoric times humans somehow recognized intuitively that some important relation existed between the Sun and plants. Such recognition is suggested by the fact that worship of the Sun was often combined with the worship of plants by early tribes and civilizations.
Earliest humans, like the other anthropoid mammals (e.g., apes, monkeys), depended totally upon the natural resources of the environment, which, until methods were developed for hunting, consisted almost completely of plants. The behaviour of pre-Stone Age humans can be inferred by studying the botany of aboriginal peoples in various parts of the world. Isolated tribal groups in South America, Africa, and New Guinea, for example, have extensive knowledge about plants and distinguish hundreds of kinds according to their utility, as edible, poisonous, or otherwise important in their culture. They have developed sophisticated systems of nomenclature and classification, which approximate the binomial system (i.e., generic and specific names) found in modern biology. The urge to recognize different kinds of plants and to give them names thus seems to be as old as the human race.
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Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher who first studied with Plato and then became a disciple of Aristotle, is credited with founding botany. Only two of an estimated 200 botanical treatises written by him are known to science: originally written in Greek about 300 bce, they have survived in the form of Latin manuscripts, De causis plantarum and De historia plantarum. His basic concepts of morphology, classification, and the natural history of plants, accepted without question for many centuries, are now of interest primarily because of Theophrastus’s independent and philosophical viewpoint.
Pedanius Dioscorides, a Greek botanist of the 1st century ce, was the most important botanical writer after Theophrastus. In his major work, an herbal in Greek, he described some 600 kinds of plants, with comments on their habit of growth and form as well as on their medicinal properties. Unlike Theophrastus, who classified plants as trees, shrubs, and herbs, Dioscorides grouped his plants under three headings: as aromatic, culinary, and medicinal. His herbal, unique in that it was the first treatment of medicinal plants to be illustrated, remained for about 15 centuries the last word on medical botany in Europe.
From the 2nd century bce to the 1st century ce, a succession of Roman writers—Cato the Elder, Varro, Virgil, and Columella—prepared Latin manuscripts on farming, gardening, and fruit growing but showed little evidence of the spirit of scientific inquiry for its own sake that was so characteristic of Theophrastus. In the 1st century ce, Pliny the Elder, though no more original than his Roman predecessors, seemed more industrious as a compiler. His Historia naturalis—an encyclopaedia of 37 volumes, compiled from some 2,000 works representing 146 Roman and 327 Greek authors—has 16 volumes devoted to plants. Although uncritical and containing much misinformation, this work contains much information otherwise unavailable, since most of the volumes to which he referred have been destroyed.
The printing press revolutionized the availability of all types of literature, including that of plants. In the 15th and 16th centuries, many herbals were published with the purpose of describing plants useful in medicine. Written by physicians and medically oriented botanists, the earliest herbals were based largely on the work of Dioscorides and to a lesser extent on Theophrastus, but gradually they became the product of original observation. The increasing objectivity and originality of herbals through the decades is clearly reflected in the improved quality of the woodcuts prepared to illustrate these books.
In 1552 an illustrated manuscript on Mexican plants, written in Aztec, was translated into Latin by Badianus; other similar manuscripts known to have existed seem to have disappeared. Whereas herbals in China date back much further than those in Europe, they have become known only recently and so have contributed little to the progress of Western botany.
The invention of the optical lens during the 16th century and the development of the compound microscope about 1590 opened an era of rich discovery about plants; prior to that time, all observations by necessity had been made with the unaided eye. The botanists of the 17th century turned away from the earlier emphasis on medical botany and began to describe all plants, including the many new ones that were being introduced in large numbers from Asia, Africa, and America. Among the most prominent botanists of this era was Gaspard Bauhin, who for the first time developed, in a tentative way, many botanical concepts still held as valid.
nf botany. adj botanical. jardin botanique. nm botanical gardens pl. Translation French - English Collins Dictionary. See also: Collaborative Dictionary French-English. "botanique": examples and translations in context. See how “botanique ” is translated from French to English with more examples in context.
The meaning of BOTANICAL is of or relating to plants or botany. How to use botanical in a sentence. of or relating to plants or botany; derived from plants; species…
Mar 17, 2024 · Noun [ edit] botanique f (plural botaniques) botany (branch of biology concerned with the scientific study of plants) Coordinate term: zoologie. Related terms [ edit] botaniser. botaniseur. botaniste. jardin botanique. Further reading [ edit]
