But his student, Theophrastus, concentrated on the investigation of plants. Toward the end of his life, his knowledge of plants was written down in two treatises called Enquiry into Plants and Cases of Plants . Theophrastus did not advance ideas about the nature of plant growth that differed in any important way from Aristotle's. His most interesting contribution was to point out how different kinds of plants grow in, and are characteristic of, different environments or habitats. With these ideas, Theophrastus appears to have been the first ecologist.
Few records exist from the intervening period.
His experiments showed that most of the weight of a plant did not come from the soil, but from water. An Englishman, John Woodard, published results of an experiment in 1699 that showed that something from the earth other than water was important to plant growth. The anatomical features that they discovered were a revelation to scientists of the times, but did not really show how plants feed themselves. Mainly on intuitive grounds, however, Malpighi advanced the idea that the leaves of a plant are its nutritive organs. He described one experimental result in support of his proposal.