Crash Course: Botany

1. What is Botany?

Plants have got you surrounded. They’re in your toothpaste, your bedsheets, a...

2. What Are Plants Made Of?

When you eat a salad for lunch, you’re digging into a giant pile of plant org...

3. Plant Cells & Hormones

At first glance, plant and animal cells have a lot in common: they’re both hi...

4. What Do These Creepy Plant Mouths Do? (Plant Tissues)

Plants—they’re just like us! Well, not exactly, but they do have skin and hai...

5. Photosynthesis and Cellular Respiration

Plants and trees may seem pretty passive, but behind the scenes, their cells ...

6. How Did Plants Evolve?

“You shouldn’t make decisions when you’re hungry.” Tell that to the cell that...

7. How Do We Categorize Plants?

Humans make stuff up—including the names and classifications of living things...

8. Why Don't These Plants Need Seeds? (Moss and Ferns)

Forget your favorite flowers, because we’re talking all about the mean green ...

9. Why Do Flowers Exist? (Gymnosperms & Angiosperms)

You couldn’t go a day without interacting with gymnosperms and angiosperms, t...

10. What Do Pea Plants Have To Do With Your Eye Color? (Mendelian Genetics)

All of the different plants on Earth have come about thanks to the simple rul...

11. GMOs are Nothing New: Plant Breeding & Gene Editing

Humans love to play with their food—in fact, we’ve been doing it for thousand...

12. The Secret Social Lives of Plants (Population & Community Ecology)

The social dynamics of plants are as complex as those at any high school. By ...

13. How We ALL Get Our Energy (Plants & Ecosystems)

From the driest deserts to the lushest forests, ecosystems are networks of li...

14. Can Planting Trees Fix Climate Change? (Plants & Biomes)

Whether in a desert, the savanna, or a tropical rainforest, plants have an im...

15. The Future of Botany

We’ve learned a lot about plants throughout this series, but there’s much mor...