Taxonomy and Nomenclature


A detailed review of Botanical Nomenclature as pdf of slides

One Specimen reading

Nice botanical review of plant naming from Univ. of Wisconsin Master Gardener program:
https://wimastergardener.org/article/whats-in-a-name-understanding-botanical-or-latin-names/

History of Plant Classification – a nice outline of the development of classification schemes with a focus on Linnaeus’ contributions. From Southern Illinois University.

Naming and Classification of Fungi – while it is set up for the fungus world, the front of this piece is entirely focused on Linnaeus and the general approaches to classification. Very useful background.

New Ginger genus Smithatris described – notes on a new ginger genus described by AMNH botanists in 2002; from the Smithsonian’s American Museum of Natural History.

America’s First Rare Plant – one account of the fascinating story of the Franklinia tree of the Alatamaha.

One specimen,many stories – (pdf opens with Adobe reader) a well written account of the taxonomic work of resolving the identity of Centaurium species – highlights the importance of herbarium specimens

Learning to identify plants by families – A great site with a fantastic plant families index – offers a wonderful approach to learning plant families by pattern recognition.

Curiosities of Biological Nomenclature – not limited to plants – includes the famous clam species Abra cadabra that was sadly more correctly repositioned in the genus Theora. So it became briefly Theora cadabra (Eames and Wilkins) Oliver before being entirely replaced by an earlier published name making it now Theora mesopotamica (Annandale). Such is the fate of Abra cadabra – vanishes like magic.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *