Is plant anatomy and morphology taught these days?  First year botany in the late 1960s had plant anatomy as the foundation for later studies on plant physiology and biochemistry, taxonomy and the plant in the environment. I actually enjoyed it, stem structure, cell and vessel types, flower morphology and ontogeny. These all became important in my later research on ion and solute transport in plants, plant nutrition, and plant biochemical responses to stress, and the unravelling of cell signalling pathways.

In the history of plant science, and animal science too probably, observation and description of structures preceded experimentation. A great example of this is in the descriptive anatomy of Nehemiah Grew in the 1670s, using both observations by eye, and some of the first using a microscope. He didn’t stop at structure, but inferred much on function and development, but stopped short of real experimentation. This was left to the founder of plant physiology, Stephen Hales, working 50 or 60 years later in the first decades of the 18^th century.  Grew published his studies over 10 years from 1672 to 1682, working from the roots, then describing stems and trunks, and upwards to leaves, flowers, fruits and seeds. The studies are noted for their comparative nature, roaming across a wide range of plant species. Here is a description of these ground-breaking books.