Botany and Botanists Botany is the study of plants and their surrounding environment. There are different types of botany, however, all of them studying different areas in which those plants live. While many people still believe that plants are anything from bacteria to large living things - such as the giant sequoia trees. But if you use this definition, then plants would include: algae, lichens, ferns, mosses, fungi, conifers and flowering plants. Modern scientists, however, place bacteria, algae, and fungi in their own distinct kingdoms. There are literally hundreds of different jobs a botanist can have, fr