---
title: "History of botany"
chunk: 2/10
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_botany"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:59:20.683361+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

==== Ancient India ====
Early Indian texts, like the Vedas mention plants with magical properties. The Sushruta Samhita, describes over 700 plants used for medicinal purposes. This text reflects a level of medical knowledge and practice comparable to ancient Egypt. Notably, the Sushruta Samhita categorizes food plants based on their parts used, taste, and dietary effects. While lacking detailed botanical descriptions beyond occasional habitat or foliage references, the text demonstrates close observation of plants. This is evident in the classification of sugarcane varieties and the listing of fungi based on their growth medium. The Charaka Samhitā, foundational Ayurvedic text, presents the earliest known plant classification system in India, using habitat, presence of flowers/fruits, and reproduction as criteria.

=== Classical antiquity ===

==== Classical Greece ====
Ancient Athens, of the 6th century BC, was the busy trade centre at the confluence of Egyptian, Mesopotamian and Minoan cultures at the height of Greek colonisation of the Mediterranean. The philosophical thought of this period ranged freely through many subjects. Empedocles (490–430 BC) foreshadowed Darwinian evolutionary theory in a crude formulation of the mutability of species and natural selection. The physician Hippocrates (460–370 BC) avoided the prevailing superstition of his day and approached healing by close observation and the test of experience. At this time, a genuine non-anthropocentric curiosity about plants emerged. The major works written about plants extended beyond the description of their medicinal uses to the topics of plant geography, morphology, physiology, nutrition, growth and reproduction.

==== Theophrastus and the origin of botanical science ====

Foremost among the scholars studying botany was Theophrastus of Eressus (Greek: Θεόφραστος; c. 371–287 BC) who has been frequently referred to as the "Father of Botany". He was a student and close friend of Aristotle (384–322 BC) and succeeded him as head of the Lyceum (an educational establishment like a modern university) in Athens with its tradition of peripatetic philosophy. Aristotle's special treatise on plants — θεωρία περὶ φυτῶν — is now lost, although there are many botanical observations scattered throughout his other writings (these have been assembled by Christian Wimmer in Phytologiae Aristotelicae Fragmenta, 1836) but they give little insight into his botanical thinking. The Lyceum prided itself in a tradition of systematic observation of causal connections, critical experiment and rational theorizing. Theophrastus challenged the superstitious medicine employed by the physicians of his day, called rhizotomi, and also the control over medicine exerted by priestly authority and tradition. Together with Aristotle, he had tutored Alexander the Great whose military conquests were carried out with all the scientific resources of the day, the Lyceum garden probably containing many botanical trophies collected during his campaigns as well as other explorations in distant lands. It was in this garden where he gained much of his plant knowledge.

===== Enquiry into Plants and Causes of Plants =====

Theophrastus's major botanical works were the Enquiry into Plants (Historia Plantarum) and Causes of Plants (Causae Plantarum) which were his lecture notes for the Lyceum. The opening sentence of the Enquiry reads like a botanical manifesto:

We must consider the distinctive characters and the general nature of plants from the point of view of their morphology, their behaviour under external conditions, their mode of generation and the whole course of their life.
The Enquiry is 9 books of "applied" botany dealing with the forms and classification of plants and economic botany, examining the techniques of agriculture (relationship of crops to soil, climate, water and habitat) and horticulture. He described some 500 plants in detail, often including descriptions of habitat and geographic distribution, and he recognised some plant groups that can be recognised as modern-day plant families. Some names he used, like Crataegus, Daucus and Asparagus have persisted until today. His second book Causes of Plants covers plant growth and reproduction (akin to modern physiology). Like Aristotle, he grouped plants into "trees", "undershrubs", "shrubs" and "herbs" but he also made several other important botanical distinctions and observations. He noted that plants could be annuals, perennials and biennials, they were also either monocotyledons or dicotyledons and he also noticed the difference between determinate and indeterminate growth and details of floral structure including the degree of fusion of the petals, position of the ovary and more. These lecture notes of Theophrastus comprise the first clear exposition of the rudiments of plant anatomy, physiology, morphology and ecology — presented in a way that would not be matched for another eighteen centuries.

==== Pedanius Dioscorides ====

A full synthesis of ancient Greek pharmacology was compiled in De Materia Medica c. 60 AD by Pedanius Dioscorides (c. 40-90 AD) who was a Greek physician with the Roman army. This work proved to be the definitive text on medicinal herbs, both oriental and occidental, for fifteen hundred years until the dawn of the European Renaissance being slavishly copied again and again throughout this period. Though rich in medicinal information with descriptions of about 600 medicinal herbs, the botanical content of the work was extremely limited.

==== Ancient Rome ====

The Romans contributed little to the foundations of botanical science laid by the ancient Greeks, but made a sound contribution to our knowledge of applied botany as agriculture. In works titled De Re Rustica, four Roman writers contributed to a compendium Scriptores Rei Rusticae, published from the Renaissance on, which set out the principles and practice of agriculture. These authors were Cato (234–149 BC), Varro (116–27 BC) and, in particular, Columella (4–70 AD) and Palladius (4th century AD). 

===== Pliny the Elder =====
Roman encyclopaedist Pliny the Elder (23–79 AD) deals with plants in Books 12 to 26 of his 37-volume highly influential work Naturalis Historia in which he frequently quotes Theophrastus but with a lack of botanical insight although he does, nevertheless, draw a distinction between true botany on the one hand, and farming and medicine on the other. It is estimated that at the time of the Roman Empire between 1300 and 1400 plants had been recorded in the West.