What does botany mean?
Word: Botany
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Botany means the scientific study of plants.
How do you spell botany?
Syllables: bot - a - ny
Tricky part: The middle vowel is a quiet a, not e or o. Students who hear only a weak sound write boteny or botony.
Watch out for: boteny, botony
Memory tip: Botany is about plants, so give it the vowel of plant: say BOT-a-nee and write the quiet middle sound as a.
Botany in a sentence
Example 1: Our botany club pressed fifty different leaves in a scrapbook.
Example 2: Grandma knows a lot of botany, though she never studied it at school.
Example 3: The botany lesson took us into the school garden to look at roots.
Fun Fact
Botany Bay in Australia got its name in 1770 because the naturalist Joseph Banks found so many new kinds of plants growing there.
Practise the CREST Way
Mingle-Mangle
Form a meaningful word from the jumbled letters:
atnoyb
a) boatman
b) botany
c) notary
d) bounty
Show answer
b) botany. Spot bot at the start and the y at the end; bounty, boatman and notary each add a letter the jumble does not have.
Spell-o-Spell
Choose the incorrectly spelt word:
a) seedling
b) bottany
c) orchard
d) nursery
Show answer
b) bottany. Botany has a single t, while orchard, nursery and seedling are spelt correctly.
Word Cookie
Find the misspelt word in the sentence:
In botany we learnt that a cactus can servive for months without any rain.
a) months
b) cactus
c) botany
d) servive
Show answer
d) servive. Survive begins with sur, as surprise and surface do.
Word Cookie
Insert the correct pair of letters to form a word:
b_tan_
a) a,y
b) o,y
c) o,i
d) a,i
Show answer
b) o,y. The first vowel is a short o, as in pot, and the word ends with a y, like many.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. A student of botany would most want to visit ____.
a) a factory that makes cars
b) a museum of old coins
c) a zoo's reptile house
d) a garden of rare plants
Show answer
d) a garden of rare plants
2. A botany lesson might explain ____.
a) how sound travels
b) how fish breathe underwater
c) how volcanoes erupt
d) how leaves make food from sunlight
Show answer
d) how leaves make food from sunlight
