botany

thumb|upright=1.25|alt=Image of ripe nutmeg fruit split open to show red aril|The fruit of Myristica fragrans, a species native to [[Indonesia, is the source of two valuable spices, the red aril (mace) enclosing the dark brown nutmeg.]]

Botany, also called phytology or plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology that studies plants, especially their anatomy, taxonomy, and ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who specialises in this field. "Plant" and "botany" may be defined more narrowly to include only land plants and their study, which is also known as phytology. Phytologists or botanists (in the strict sense) study approximately 410,000 species of land plants, including some 391,000 species of vascular plants (of which approximately 369,000 are flowering plants) and approximately 20,000 bryophytes.