The relevance of taxonomy in our genomic era is greater than ever. Correct naming is crucial for developing new foods and medicines, and for understanding our changing environment. Amazingly, we do ...

A gardener friend of ours used to object to calling a plant by its Latin name. She heard it as pretense and obfuscation. But after the sage incident, she conceded that there was some point to it.

Ever wondered how plants get their names? Well, we gardeners can thank a brilliant 18th-century Swedish botanist and zoologist by the name of Carl Linnaeus for the birth of modern plant taxonomy, ...

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You say tomato, I say Lycopersicon esculentum. You say potato, I say Solanum tuberosum. But Carl Linnaeus was the real plant buff. Often called the father of classification, Swedish naturalist ...

https://siris-libraries.si.edu/ipac20/ipac.jsp?&profile=liball&source=~!silibraries&uri=full=3100001~!816348~!0#focus ...

In the 4 th century BC Androsthenes of Thasos, one of Alexander the Great’s admirals, noticed that the leaves of the tamarind tree drooped at night to protect its fruits. Francis Bacon, in Sylva ...