Mailing the story:

Branching allows git to track multiple lines of development. This essentially allows you to have multiple versions of your project in development at the same time. For example, many projects will choose to have a stable master branch while new features or bug fixes are implemented in a development or testing branch. Once the project organizers are satisfied that the changes made in the development branch have reached the required level of maturity, they may choose to merge those changes into the master branch.