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I don’t know if this is something specific to botanical journals or scientific journals in general. A lot of the botanical publications in this period use katakana instead of hiragana. The picture above is from the 1927 edition of the Journal of Japanese Botany. Almost all of the body text is like this. The last edition of this specific journal that I can find with katakana body text is the 1943 edition, and then it becomes hiragana in the 1948 edition.

Siena
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    ? Prewar, katakana was just the standard writing, as I understand – Angelos Nov 02 '22 at 01:47
  • @Angelos Are you sure? I see hiragana used in some sections, like in the table of contents. Does this mean people back then were used to reading katakana in place of hiragana? Do you have any references that explain why the change to hiragana was made? – Siena Nov 02 '22 at 02:15
  • Katakana was standard for particles and okurigana. There's probably already an existing question on it somewhere. – Leebo Nov 02 '22 at 02:34
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    I think it was only in the 21st century that laws were hiraganized officially. https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B0%91%E6%B3%95%E7%8F%BE%E4%BB%A3%E8%AA%9E%E5%8C%96 – sundowner Nov 02 '22 at 02:46
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    Does this answer your question? [Orthography at the turn of the previous century](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/14848/orthography-at-the-turn-of-the-previous-century) Also related: https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/50317/5010 – naruto Nov 02 '22 at 04:20
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    @Siena, notice that the use of katakana and hiragana in the text in the image is essentially reversed from the modern practice -- katakana is used for okurigana and particles, and hiragana is used for the scientific organism names and other such terminology. I cannot see the TOC in the image above, but I suspect this will show a similar usage pattern. – Eiríkr Útlendi Nov 02 '22 at 04:23
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    あぢさゐ is in hiragana, and that was also standard in those days. See [this](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/a/44434/5010). – naruto Nov 02 '22 at 04:30

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