Botany is the systematic study of plants, their classification, structure, physiology and distribution. It has ancient roots in herbals and materia medica compiled across many cultures, but its modern discipline dates to 1753, when the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus published Species Plantarum, introducing binomial nomenclature, a two part Latin name for every species, and a hierarchical classification that for the first time let botanists anywhere refer to the same plant with the same fixed name regardless of local or vernacular terminology. That naming convention remains the working standard the discipline still uses.
Every tradition that offers, burns, chews or wears a named plant, sacred basil, soma, peyote, the lotus, frankincense, gives the atlas a plant identity claim that botany can check. A vernacular or scriptural plant name is frequently ambiguous or has shifted meaning over centuries, and only a controlled botanical identification, tied to a described species rather than a folk name, can say with confidence which actual plant a tradition's text or practice refers to. Where that identification is contested or unresolved, the atlas records the ambiguity rather than adopting one reading silently.