NAMING OF PLANTS

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 90, 14 March 1935, Page 4

NAMING OF PLANTS

THE WORK OF LINNAEUS. Addressing those present at the Rongotea and District Horticultural and General Produce Society s autuin show, on Tuesday, Mr W. CL Black of Palmerston JNorth, who performed the opening ceremony, remarked upon tlie development of the current system of naming plants and spoke of the great service Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish botanist, had given horticulture and mankind in general in laying the foundation of the system. There was, said Mr Black, a remarkable relationship between plant life and human life, and a great similarity in the cycle of plant life and ours which had prompted many epics of jjoetry, prose and song. There was a rhythm in plant life which related to the seasons and to human beings—a youthful growing time, a period of maturity and great activity, a time concerned with reproduction, and, finally, the period at which activity waned and led to death. I

“Have we ever stopped to think what a wonderful service to humanity was given by those men who originally divided all plant life into groups and | ascertained their relationship to each other?” asked Mr Black. “It was first done by the Greeks and the Romans in an unscientific method which divided them into trees, shrubs, and herbs, this being Aristotle’s method of grouping. Nothing more was done until tlie IGtli and 17th centuries when John Ray, the father of English natural history, divided all plants into two groups, the flowering and the flowerless. This was a great step forward. and other botanists continued the work until the time of Linnaeus. This eminent botanist introduced a system of classification which has since been superseded but which lias had an influence on all future botitny which cannot be over-estimated. It was lie who showed the way in what was a really scientific wilderness and earned for him the name of “the father of modern botany.” He became the greatest hotnnist of his day and made the, science intelligible by laying down the principle that every plant should have | a short name which would enable it : to by recognised by investigators all over the world. Up to this time botanists had only one Latin name of; each plant, the common dog-rose being; spoken of as ‘rosa sylvestris vulgaris ' floro odorata incarnate,’ which means ‘the common rose with a flesh-coloured; sweet-scented flower.’ Think what it j would mean to-day when we study ' botany if everyone of the 176,000 ■ known species of plants in the world i had ns long a name as that. ■ “Linnaeus changed that order and l set himself the amazing task of giving; every known plant and animal a simple; name consisting of two Latin words, i and he did it. Science to-day blesses ! and honours his name for this great epoch-making work. He was one of | the world’s greatest inventors, for this idea of distinguishing every living creature by two Latin words, so that students all over the world could recognise it, was as great an invention as that of the locomotive or the telephone.” j;