Bryology is the science of what? The etymology of the term and the formation of the doctrine

Bryology is the science of mosses (bryophytes). In Greek, "brion" - "moss", "logos" - "teaching", thus, the literal translation - "the doctrine of moss." Bryology is a fairly young scientific branch, which is one of the divisions of botany. Scientists involved in the study of mosses are called briologists.

The subject of studying bryology

Any scientific teaching assumes the existence of the subject of study. Since bryology is the science of bryophytes, the subject of its study is primarily species belonging to a given plant family, as well as anatomical, morphological, biochemical, genetic, ecological, geographical, physiological characteristics, bryologists, among other things, exploring the possibility of using Mosses for medical and domestic purposes.

Classification of Bryophytes

Judging by the database compiled as of 2010, in nature there are more than 15 thousand species, more than 1 thousand genera and more than 150 families of mosses. Several years earlier, in the section of botany called "bryology" (the science of what is described in this article), all plants that are moss-like, scientists were considered as a single taxon of the rank of the department of Mosses.

Science does not stand still, therefore for today there are three groups of mosses allocated to the following departments:
1. Anthocero-like.
2. Bryophyte.
3. Hepatic.

The Formation of Science

The study of mosses was first carried out in the middle of the 19th century. Bryology itself (this science of bryophytes) is considered a young discipline, which was formed at a time when it became possible to use microscopic technique in studying the structure of small plants with a size of 3 to 50 mm. I. Hedwig (Switzerland), S. Bridel and V. Shimper (Germany), D. Hooker (Great Britain), W. Mitten (USA) reviewed the structure and systemic construction of mosses. At the dawn of the 20th century, the Finnish scientist VF Broterus compiled a classification of bryophytes (and bryology is the science of them), which for a long time was considered the main, but was later modified somewhat due to the possibility of including molecular studies.

In Russia, the study of mosses began also in the middle of the 19th century: a geographic society consisting of geographer EK Gofman and biologists FI Ruprecht and ME Tsikkendrat, was sent to the north of the Urals, the expedition managed to study some Bryophytes and even collect a herbarium numbering a hundred and ten species. A century later, the Russian botanist A. G. Shrenk from 1948 to 1955 was on an expedition in the north of Russia, where he actively studied bryophytes (bryology is the science of bryophytes). The scientist managed to open 25 species of plants, mostly leaf-stalks.

The development of scientific thought at the present time

At present, the inventory of bryophytes is not finished. According to some sources, the world has 22 to 27 thousand species of bryophytes. Still poorly studied scientists-briologists are the tropical latitudes and the southern hemisphere.

The largest herbaria of bryophytes in Russia are created in scientific centers of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Kirovsk (Murmansk region), Vladivostok, Irkutsk.