This section presents an overview of plant architectural analysis, a botanical approach to study plant structures.

Using the identification of several morphological criteria and considering the plant as a whole, from germination to death, architectural analysis is essentially a detailed, multilevel, comprehensive and dynamic approach to plant development.
Completed by precise morphological observations and appropriate quantitative methods of analysis, recent research in this field has greatly increased our understanding of plant structure and development and has led to the establishment of a real conceptual and methodological framework for plant form and structure analysis and representation.

At whole plant level, the architecture of a plant can be seen as a hierarchical branched system in which the axes can be grouped into categories which define the architectural unit of a species, a central concept in architectural methodology. At older growth stages, this architectural unit may be duplicated in the plant crown, through reiteration processes.

The architectural approach is a tool for describing plant organization, for knowledge of a plant's life history, and for plant structure sampling and measurements.
This methodology can be applied to describe the structure and dynamics of plants, based on the static information provided by different individual plants.

Despite their recent origin, architectural concepts and analysis methods provide a powerful tool for studying plant form and ontogeny.

The aim of this course is to enable students to:

• Discover plant architecture and its interests
• Understand the organization of plant structure
• Learn about the main architectural analysis concepts
• Acquire the ability to define the framework of the architectural unit of a given plant