This guide offers a systematic approach to the wide variety of published materials on the use of plants by people.
Economic plants are defined as being useful either directly, as in food, or indirectly, as products we use or that enhance the environment..
Botany is important in the area of economic productivity because it is involved in the study of crops and ideal growing techniques that helps farmers increase crop yield..
And an economic botanist is someone who studies plants, specifically how people interact with plants.
It's a bit different than a botanist who studies plants in general without the influence from people.
For example, an economic botanist will study how some cultures use plants as medicine instead of prescription medications.
Popular economic botany; or the botanical and commercial characters of the principal articles of vegetable origin, used for food, clothing, tanning, dyeing, building, medicine, perfumery, etc.
Reeve and Co., London. 1865.
Profitable plants:
Teosinte and rice are two examples of plants modified so that their economic values would increase.
Contrary to common belief that modern economic botany had been spearheaded by the British as early as the 19th century, economic botany had been exemplified in the form of plant diffusion for millennia.
Economic botany, because of its association with Man's needs, has not always been considered a respectable scientific subject.
Thus Barrau (1971, 1982) cited Rivinus (1690) as proclaiming that botany should be restricted to the study of plants and not their properties.
