**Preface to "Recent Progress in Plant Taxonomy and Floristic Studies"**

There is a relentless human need to understand life by tracing the historical development of the discipline of plant sciences, the part of natural science that covers traditionally treated plants.

The history of plant taxonomy and floristic studies—the botanical classification of plants into different groups and their distribution in different natural habitats and evolution—stretches from the work of ancient Greeks to modern evolutionary botanists and plant scientists. As an area of science, plant systematics came into being slowly, with early plans usually being considered as part of the research on medicine or drugs. Later on, classification, description, and evolution were driven through natural biology and natural history. Until the discovery of the theory of evolution, almost all classifications and descriptions were based on natural history and natural biology. Botany in the 18th and 19th centuries made significant advancements toward a more holistic classification methodology, eventually based on evolutionary relationships.

> **Alessio Papini, Mushtaq Ahmad, Fazal Ullah, and Wajid Zaman** *Editors*
