Nomenclature1/5
1) Taxonomy
From time immemorial man has wanted to name the things around him to be able to recognize them and communicate his discoveries. Over the centuries systems of nomenclature and taxonomy more and more sophisticated appeared.
Today, for living things at least, there are two common taxonomy systems, a phylogenetic one that classifies species according to their DNA and conventional or systematic taxonomy where species are ranked according to their morphologies.
For the amateur botanist, the systematic taxonomy is most appropriate.
The systematic taxonomy is divided as follows :
For the amateur botanist only the last divisions are significant: the family, genus and species.
A family is a group of species that has similar characteristics, a family is separated into genus, genus represent a set of species with similar characteristics within a given family.
In most classification systems, including the systematic taxonomy, the species name is Latin and is binary, it consists of the genus (generic name) followed by species-specific epithet (specific name).