Hot take: People confuse "botany" with "gardening" way too much in this community

I mean it's fine if you like gardening but botany is the science of plants not just keeping them alive. I was in a thread last night where someone was arguing about pruning techniques and calling it botany. That's horticulture. I only noticed because my professor in college spent like 20 minutes explaining the difference on day one. Does it bug anyone else or am I just being picky?

3 comments

3 Comments

wesley6394d ago

Pruning is literally plant surgery, which makes it more like veterinary medicine than gardening.

garcia.cameron4d ago

What gets me is how the whole debate kind of skips over ethnobotany, which is the actual intersection of people and plants. Like, my neighbor grows medicinal herbs and swears by old folk remedies passed down from her grandma. That's not gardening, it's not botany, it's something else entirely. You can find textbook examples of plants being used in ceremonies or for traditional healing that don't fit neatly into either camp. So maybe the lines are blurrier than we think depending on where you're standing.

charlie1984d ago

Right, folk remedies from grandma aren't gardening or botany, they're just real life.