It's 1665, and scientist Robert Hooke has just used his newly-invented light microscope to look at a thin slice of cork up close.
He's stunned to see that the tree bark is made up of thousands of tiny compartments, which he names for the little rooms that monks live in, called "cells".
He feverishly writes in his book, Micrographia, "They were indeed the first microscopical pores I ever saw; and perhaps, that were ever seen, for I had not met with any Writer or Person, that had made any mention of them before this." Which is 1665-speak for "Woah, did I just discover cells? I think I just discovered cells." And from that point on, scientists have never stopped studying them.
Cells are a fundamental unit of all life on Earth that help us understand everything from the teeniest microbes to the blubberiest whales.
But botanists won't let you forget that the first cell ever discovered was from a plant.
And hundreds of years later, we've learned more about these things — and about ourselves — than Robert Hooke could have ever imagined.
Hi! I'm Alexis, and this is Crash Course Botany.
While you might think that plants and animals don't have much in common, it turns out that our cells actually have a lot of similarities.
First off, both plant and animal cells are surrounded by a barrier called a cell membrane that allows the cell to decide what kind of molecules it wants to let in or out.
And both types of cells manufacture lots of proteins using ribosomes, which are the little granules spread throughout the cell, like the sprinkles in a Funfetti cake.
