Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Botany (Greek Βοτάνη (botanē) meaning "pasture", "herbs" "grass", or "fodder"; [2] Medieval Latin botanicus – herb, plant) [3] and zoology are, historically, the core disciplines of biology whose history is closely associated with the natural sciences chemistry, physics and geology. A distinction can be made between botanical science ...
Botany originated in prehistory as herbalism with the efforts of early humans to identify – and later cultivate – plants that were edible, poisonous, and possibly medicinal, making it one of the first endeavours of human investigation. Medieval physic gardens, often attached to monasteries, contained plants possibly having medicinal benefit.
The use of plants for medicinal purposes, and their descriptions, dates back two to three thousand years. [10] [11] The word herbal is derived from the mediaeval Latin liber herbalis ("book of herbs"): [2] it is sometimes used in contrast to the word florilegium, which is a treatise on flowers [12] with emphasis on their beauty and enjoyment rather than the herbal emphasis on their utility. [13]
[3] [4] Ethnobotany integrates knowledge from botany, anthropology, ecology, and chemistry to study plant-related customs across cultures. Researchers in this field document and analyze how different societies use local flora for various purposes, including medicine , food , religious use , intoxicants , building materials , fuels and clothing ...
At that time both botany and the art of gardening stressed the utility of plants for man; the popular herbal, described the medical uses of plants. [37] During the Middle Ages, there was an expansion of book culture that spread through the medieval world.
Phytogeography (from Greek φυτόν, phytón = "plant" and γεωγραφία, geographía = "geography" meaning also distribution) or botanical geography is the branch of biogeography that is concerned with the geographic distribution of plant species and their influence on the earth's surface. [1]
[3] [4] The taxonomy criteria of medieval texts is different from what is used today. Plants with similar external appearance were usually grouped under the same species name, though in modern taxonomy they are considered different. [5]
Medieval gardens were an important source of food for households, but also encompassed orchards, cemeteries and pleasure gardens, as well as providing plants for medicinal and cultural uses. For monasteries, gardens were sometimes important in supplying the monks' livelihoods, [ 1 ] primarily because many of the plants had multiple uses: for ...