Botany:

In the Bronze and the Iron Ages, agriculture became the principal mode of production of man in all lands. It is, thus, not surprising that in India, botany and elementary plant physiology developed with the advances made in agriculture. The developments  in medicine also helped these sciences. For example,  in Rigvedic hymns, Atharvaveda, Taittiriya Samhita etc., scattered references are made to the following: 

i)  different parts of the plant such as mula (root),  tula (shoot), kanda (stem),  valsa (twigs) etc. 

ii)  classification of plants such as osadhi (medicinal),  valli (climber),  guccha (bushy) etc., according  to their morphology and use, and 

iii)  physiology of plants in  terms of what nourishes a plant through addition to the soil, such as cowdung etc. A systematic  study of botany, 'Vrksayurveda' by  Parasara, however, came into being by only about the first century B.C. The treatise formalised a lot of  the earlier botanical and medicinal knowledge. We will not go into its details.