Food & Drink0 min ago
What is taxonomy
00:00 Fri 02nd Nov 2001 | Home & Garden
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Its the system used to name and group different plants according to their characteristics using Latin as the language.�
Q.� Who developed the system
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The system still used today was conceived by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus in the eighteenth century.�
Instead of simply using a phrase which described how the plant looked, where it grew or what it could be used for, Linnaeus attributed each plant a genus - basically a group of related plants - as the prefix and then added a descriptive epithet which distinguish it from the other plants in the same grouping i.e. alba (white) grandiflora (big flowers) or japonica (from Japan).
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Q.� But why can't we just use common names, in English
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Many budding gardeners often feel the use of all this Latin terminology is a ploy adopted by more experienced gardeners to make them feel superior. After all, how many people are taught Latin these days outside the elite public schools�
However, there are good reasons for it. For a start, not every plant possesses a common name or a number of quite different plants share the same common name in different parts of the country. For instance, the Scottish Plane tree is the sycamore (Acer pseudoplatanus) while the English London Plane is a completely different genus (Platanus x hispanica). Conversely the same plant can have different common names depending on whereabouts you live in the country.
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Also remember that the majority of plants we grow in the garden come from different countries around the world. A universal system is a lot easier to master than thousands of common names in Chinese, Indian or Norwegian.
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Q.� So, in simple terms, how does the system work
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The gardener Andy Sturgeon recently came up with an excellent way to demystify the way plants are named. Imagine the plant as a car.�
Most of us would be able to identify the most common makes of car by its basic characteristics - body shape or manufacturers insignia. Take say, a VW Polo 1.4L. By being able to identify it as a VW we have identified the equivalent of a plants genus - what group it belongs to, like Magnolia for instance.
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The Polo part of the name is equivalent to a plant's species, in other words what distinguishes it from others in its group, i.e. M. grandiflora simply means Magnolia with big flowers, while the 1.4L defines it as a cultivar of that species, as in Heaven Scent, which, obviously, is strongly perfumed.
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As a general rule the genus name always starts with a capital letter, the species is lower case and the cultivar name is again in capitals within quote marks.
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Q. What are cultivars
A.� The term cultivar is used to describe slight differences within species, like variegated leaves ('Variegata').
These forms either occur naturally in the wild or be selected from raised seedlings or occur as mutations.�
To continue to be true to type they must be propagated from the original by cuttings, grafts or divisions or grown annually from selected seed.
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Q.� Why do some plant names change
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Often it is because they have simply been wrongly identified in the first place.�
Take bamboo for instance. Botanists often rely on a plants flowers to classify the genus, but bamboos flower so rarely that a particular bamboo might have been wrongly categorised on the strength characteristics it has in common with others. However, often when they flower it is found that they actually belong to a completely different genus.
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Scientific advances to can sometimes lead to a plant’s classification being revised. Thankfully most good gardening books identify plants by their former as well as their new names.
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If you've got a question about your home or garden, click here.
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By Tom Gard
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