Injection, squishing, smoke, bluespace teleporting, and most of the other traits all existed with old botany.
The difference is, new botany isn't so esoteric, difficult to understand, or overly-complex, so more people are playing it now and learning how to properly utilize botany, on the whole.
There are new features, for sure, in addition to some new interactions, but for the most part--it's just more accessible and presented a lot better to the player.
Now that we've had a week with the reduced size Growth Serum, and closed the one for removing it.... would you be opposed to re-opening the one for removing Growth Serum, so that conversation can be had with the context of the nerf?