Botanical questions. When an unfamiliar plant attracts our attention usually the first questions we wish to ask are: What is it? What is it good for? or What does it do? Such questions have been asked from early times about plants in all parts of the world, and the classified knowledge which has been acquired in endeavoring to answer them has given us the science of botany.

In beginning our study of the subject it will be profitable for us to consider in a general way what it really means to answer questions of this sort, so that we may appreciate something of their importance and what they involve. Each question, as we shall see, has led to numberless others until the science has so broadened as to embrace every reasonable inquiry that may be made regarding plants.