Plant Science is originated in prehistory as herbalism with the efforts of early
humans to identify and later cultivate edible, medicinal and poisonous plants, making it one of the oldest branches of science. Medieval physic
gardens, often attached to monasteries, contained plants of medical importance.
They were forerunners of the first botanical gardens attached to universities,
founded from the 1540s onward. One of the earliest was the Padua botanical
garden. These gardens facilitated the academic study of plants. Efforts to
catalogue and describe their collections were the beginnings of plant taxonomy, and led in 1753 to the binomial system of Carl Linnaeus that remains in
use to this day.
