section_path: Branches of botany
section_name: Branches of botany
paragraph_text: Branches of botany
  
  Botany is divided along several axes.
  
  Some subfields of botany relate to particular groups of organisms. Divisions related to the broader historical sense of botany include bacteriology, mycology (or fungology) and phycology - the study of bacteria, fungi and algae respectively - with lichenology as a subfield of mycology. The narrower sense of botany in the sense of the study of embryophytes (land plants) is disambiguated as phytology. Bryology is the study of mosses (and in the broader sense also liverworts and hornworts). Pteridology (or filicology) is the study of ferns and allied plants. A number of other taxa of ranks varying from family to subgenus have terms for their study, including agrostology (or graminology) for the study of grasses, synantherology for the study of composites, and batology for the study of brambles.
  
  Study can also be divided by guild rather than clade or grade. Dendrology is the study of woody plants.
  
  Many divisions of biology have botanical subfields. These are commonly denoted by prefixing the word plant (e.g. plant taxonomy, plant ecology, plant anatomy, plant morphology, plant systematics, plant ecology), or prefixing or substituting the prefix phyto- (e.g. phytochemistry, phytogeography). The study of fossil plants is palaeobotany. Other fields are denoted by adding or substituting the word botany (e.g. systematic botany).
  
  Phytosociology is a subfield of plant ecology that classifies and studies communities of plants.
  
  The intersection of fields from the above pair of categories gives rise to fields such as bryogeography (the study of the distribution of mosses).
  
  Different parts of plants also give rise to their own subfields, including xylology, carpology (or fructology) and palynology, these been the study of wood, fruit and pollen/spores respectively.
  
  Botany also overlaps on the one hand with agriculture, horticulture and silviculture, and on the other hand with medicine and pharmacology, giving rise to fields such as agronomy, horticultural botany, phytopathology and phytopharmacology.