Botany in a Day Nature Merit Badge by the Boy Scouts of America. Although the text is primarily oriented towards North American plants, "Botany in a Day" has been used to identify plants in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and South America. As of 2010, there were more than 45,000 copies in print. Botany in a Day Botany in a Day: The Patterns Method of Plant Identification is a book by Thomas J. Elpel published by HOPS Press, LLC. The book emphasizes family characteristics for plant identification. Related plants typically have similar floral features and often similar uses. For example, plants of the mustard family
History of botany his "Libellus De Re Herbaria Novus" (1538) published names, descriptions and localities of many native British plants. Herbals contributed to botany by setting in train the science of plant description, classification, and botanical illustration. Up to the 17th century botany and medicine were one and the same but those books emphasising medicinal aspects eventually omitted the plant lore to become modern pharmacopoeias; those that omitted the medicine became more botanical and evolved into the modern compilations of plant descriptions we call Floras. These were often backed by specimens deposited in a herbarium which was a collection of dried plants that