Botany is the scientific study of plants: how they are built, how they grow, how they make seeds and flowers, and how we group them. It is a branch of biology — biology covers all living things, but botany is the plant part. You meet the word in school science and at university, and in the names of departments and books. Though actually, older writing also uses botany for the plants of a place (“the botany of this island”), meaning the plant life there, not the school subject. That use is less common now; most people would say flora or plant life instead.