PLANT TAXONOMY

Plant taxonomy is the science of naming plants. Carl Linnaeus is considered to be the father of taxonomy and used Latin as the primary language of identifying plants. Each plant thus has what is called a botanical name.

• Genus
• Species
• Common Name

For example...... Parthenocissus tricuspidata Boston Ivy

The genus is Partheonocissus which is always written with the first letter in capitals. The species is tricuspidata which is always written in all lower case. The common name is Boston Ivy and is written with the first letter of each word in capitals.

In some cases there are what is called a caltivar (variety). In such cases the cultivar name would go after the species name and is put in single quotes with the first letter of each word capitalized.