Without plants, humans couldn't live.
People have been studying plants since the dawn of humankind. Plants provide food for people and animals, filter the air of pollutants, act as medicines (and poisons), beautify our homes, gardens, and cities, anchor the topsoil, and carpet the wilderness. For a great botany project, focus on an aspect of life that you find particularly interesting, such as medicine, and find out how the study of plants relates to it.
Carnivorous Plants
Venus fly traps (Dionaea muscipula) aren't the only kind of carnivorous plants. Carnivorous plants are more diverse and geographically scattered than most people would guess, living from the rainforest of Borneo to the swamps of northwestern Wisconsin. For your project, either spotlight a specific kind of carnivorous plant (explaining where it is found, what it eats, how it traps its prey, what it looks like, and who discovered it) or talk about the staggering variety of carnivorous plants. Compare their various predation strategies.
Ethnobotany
Many rainforest plants are still unstudied.
According to the Baca Institute of Ethnobotany, ethnobotany is the study of "how and why people use and conceptualize plants in their local environments." Ethnobotanists work with people who have deep knowledge of plants and their uses, such as indigeneous peoples ranging from the American Southwest to deep in the Amazon Basin, recording their knowledge and beliefs about plants. Some important modern medicines emerged from ethnobotanical knowledge. Explain what ethnobotany is and why it is important, and show ways in which it has led to beneficial discoveries. For example, a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website about the history of malaria explains how in the 17th century, "Spanish Jesuit missionaries in South America learned of a medicinal bark from indigenous Indian tribes." From the bark, we now derive the powerful antimalarial drug quinine.
Corpse Flowers
The corpse flower only reeks when blooming.
If you like unusual plants, focus your project on Amorphophallus titanum, sometimes called the "corpse flower" for its potent, rotting-flesh stench. First discovered in Indonesia in 1878, this strange plant can grow to be 15 feet tall and blooms less than once a year. Botanical gardens around the world treasure their corpse flowers.
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