Forensic Botany - Forensic Science Field

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FORENSIC BOTANY

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Forensic Science Field

        In a world as complex as our own, there are even more complicated matters among us. Criminals and bad people commit crimes every day, and when those crimes need to get solved, the forensic science team brings in their expertise to solve the case. Within the field of Forensics there is a plethora of different sub sciences that the CSI team will use. This paper will discuss the implications that forensic botany brings to the field.

        There are a number of different sciences that help forensic botanist. There is much more than meets the eye, no longer is knowing where specific plants come from is a small hobby, but knowing about these plants determine so many different factors at a crime scene. Every plant has a certain region that it grows in, and there can be minute differences between the life cycle of the plants, or different species, that will help a forensic botanist determine a timeline of the crime scene at hand. That is just one of the many details that forensic botany can do for the police.

The number of different sciences that forensic botanists must know for their field, some of which include, palynology (study of pollens), Dendrochronology (study of tree rings), Limnology (study of aquatic environments), Systematics (classification of plants), and molecular biology has a role in this science as well.  Each of these can have fascinating instances where they could determine where a murder took place, if the body was dumped in another location. One instance of this could be if someone was killed in a marsh like area. There are certain types of plants and algae that grow in the aquatic areas that would not be suitable to grow anywhere else. If the body has any traces of those plants, pollen, or any other identifying markers on that specific body and was then moved somewhere else, that specific combination of plants would lead the investigators to where the murder took place.

        This science is incredibly complicated, and that is why the level of precision that takes places is nothing short of amazing. Almost 80 years of this forensic science has been accepted in the court rooms of America. The history of forensic botany has a captivating beginning, starting back in the 1930’s in the famous case of the Lindburgh baby. The first instance of forensic botany evidence was at the trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, he was found guilty from the ladder that was at his house, and the wood matched a missing wood board in his attic. Almost 80 years later this case is still fascinating, especially with the technology was used back then. Most of the information came from good ole’ fashion police work but, the forensics is what pulled it all together. The ladder was custom built with four different woods instead of a single type of wood. This led police to looking for different wood mills to see which sold the specific types of wood. In the local area there were two different mills that had the same wood that the ladder was created with. There was a plank in Hauptmann’s attic that was missing, and that plank matched a part of the ladder. This case has pages upon pages of information, but what this case boils down to is that the main evidence that put Hauptmann behind bars, and the child’s family could feel relieved that the man who killed their baby was found. A child’s family could start to have some piece, and a man was put behind bars and given the death penalty, due to a ladder made of certain woods, seeing the saw marks in the wood, and some brilliant science to take a man down.