THE TERM CELL IS DERIVED from the Latin cella, meaning storeroom or chamber. It was first used in biology in 1665 by the English botanist Robert Hooke to describe the individual units of the honeycomb-like structure he observed in cork under a compound microscope. The “cells” Hooke observed were actually the empty lumens of dead cells surrounded by cell walls, but the term is an apt one because cells are the basic building blocks that define plant structure. This book will emphasize the physiological and biochemical functions of plants, but it is important to recognize that these functions depend on.
