BIOL 2080 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Overproduction, Maclura Pomifera, Constantine Samuel Rafinesque
25 Mar 2016
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Document Summary
Plant systematics is the branch of botany that is concerned with the naming, identification, evolution, and classification (arrangement into groups with common characteristics) of plants. Simplest form of classification is a system based on need and use; early humans classified plants into edible, poisonous, medicinal, and hallucinogenic categories. Earliest known formal classification was proposed by greek naturalist theophrastus: described and classified 500 species of plants into herbs, undershrubs, shrubs, and trees, regarded as the father of botany. Roman naturalists pliny the elder and dioscorides: both described medicinal plants in their writings. By the beginning of the 18th century, it was common to name plants using a polynomial, which included a single word name for the plant (today called the genus name), followed by a lengthy list of descriptive terms. The system had its flaws: was not standardized, different polynomials existed for the same plant, cumbersome to remember some of the longer polynomials, which could be a paragraph in length.
