The unit in one line
How living things are classified, then the plant kingdom group by group, from bacteria and viruses to flowering plants, ending with what Nepal gets from them. 9 of Botany's 40 questions, the heaviest botany unit, spread over eleven chapters.
Read in this order
Three sittings, one per block, work well. About 100 minutes in all.
Classification and the lower groups
- Introduction to classification (9 min) — two kingdoms to five kingdoms to three domains, the hierarchy and the binomial rules. Read first: every later chapter hangs on it.
- Monera and virus (9 min) — the bacterial cell, Gram staining, nutrition, the growth curve, cyanobacteria, and virus structure with lytic and lysogenic cycles.
- Fungi and lichens (9 min) — the four classes, yeast and Mucor, and the three lichen thallus types.
- Algae (9 min) — green, brown and red algae compared, and the conjugation of Spirogyra.
The land plants, by alternation of generations
- Bryophytes (9 min) — the gametophyte dominates; Marchantia.
- Pteridophytes (9 min) — the sporophyte dominates, but the sperm still swim; Dryopteris.
- Gymnosperms (9 min) — naked seeds; Pinus and its two-year cycle.
Flowering plants and their uses
- Angiosperms: morphology (9 min) — the terms for root, stem, leaf, inflorescence, flower and fruit.
- Angiosperms: families (9 min) — Brassicaceae, Solanaceae, Fabaceae and Liliaceae by floral formula. Read after morphology: the formulae are written in its terms.
- Economic importance (8 min) — what each group, from viruses to flowering plants, gives Nepal.
- Medicinal plants of Nepal (9 min) — neem, sarpagandha, yarsagumba, tulasi and ginger.
How it is asked
MEC sets the paper roughly half recall, a third understanding and a fifth application. Recall here is which group has which feature (elaters, a peristome, heterocysts), who proposed which system, and which family has a tetradynamous androecium. Understanding is why bryophytes still need water to breed or why lichens mark clean air. Application is a described specimen or flower to place in its group or family.
Then practise
Each chapter has a fixed-length chapter test under Practice › Topics, drawn from questions written to that chapter's scope. Sit it after reading; a second sitting a week later shows whether it stuck.