In the prospicient story of plant skill , no name is more renowned than that of Linnaeus and no book is more extremely regarded than his “ Species Plantarum , ” published in1753 .
Who was Linnaeus ? To what does he owe his fame ? And why is the citation of his book on the mintage of plants desirable of card ?
Carl Linne ( Linnaeus is the Latin physical body of the name ) was contain in1707,the Logos of a body politic minister of religion in south Sweden , and a erotic love of flowers seems to have been instinctive with him . They were his first toys : when he was a noisy baby , he would at once become hushed if a flower were put into his hand . As a fry of four , he pass away to a picnic with his father , who told the guests thenames of various flowersthey saw , and thereafter it was the lad ’s slap-up pleasure to take more and more plant names . He little think , we might be trusted , that he was thus laying a foundation for his living ’s piece of work .
At schooltime he was an middling scholar , though especially good in Latin , the only nomenclature other than Swedish that he ever bonk . But Latin was sufficient , as in those days it was thelingua f ranca oflearned men in all country . Plants were still his main interest , to the disappointment of his parents who had intended him for the church , and when he went on to the University of Uppsala it was to take medicine and botany , which then went hand in hand . Except for the small money his parent could give him , he had to do work his way , and a laborious way it was until allay by scholarships and the kindness of professors who gave board and room to so anticipate a untested man .
When only25,Linnaeus was choose by the Academy of Sciences to review Lapland , the bleak northern area of Sweden and Norway . There he traveled over 4,000 miles in conditions of hardship but with much achiever , include the find of more than 100 raw plant . Next he went to Holland , where he consume his M.D. , stayed three yr and produced 14 books , then visited England and France , set up in Stockholm as a medico , married , and finally reconcile down in1741 to his long calling as prof of phytology in Uppsala .
Students came to him from many terra firma , for he was a great teacher and as unusual as he was revolutionise . To have been a pupil of Linnaeus was in itself enough to secure an appointment , and some of these pupils went on to fame .
As the busy years fall out , Linnaeus became more renowned and honors came to him . He was create a Knight of the Polar Star in 1753 and was admitted to the House of Nobles in 1761 , adding the honorific “ von ” to his name . He yield little attention to this , however , and sign Carl Linne as often as Carl von Linne . In 1775 , being in poor health , he resigned and lingered in the gradual decline of his faculty until his death in 1778 .
In circumstance which the Swedish people have never ceased to deplore , the assembling of Linnaeus , including his herbarium , manuscript , correspondence , ingurgitate animal and birds , shell , insect , and minerals , were purchased from his phratry by a immature English naturalist , J. E. Smith , and take to London . There , with a few exceptions , they are to this day preserved as invaluable treasure .
It is work out that Linnaeus spell altogether 180 books , gravid and small , one of the latest being the “ Species Plantarum , ” which he first planned in 1733 and eventually amass with immense labor between 1746 and 1753 .
In taxonomical botany “ Species Plantarum ” is regarded as an epoch - making work , since it has been universally agreed upon as the starting - peak for the Latin binomial , or two - tidings , gens of plants . These are recognise in all countries , and so enable cocksure identification of a plant species anywhere , regardless of innumerable common figure .
It is not claimed that Linnaeus invented binominal names , or that he guess they would suffice without the extra set phrase that went with plant name in the aged books . Theophrastus , the father of botany used binomial even in the 4th century B.C. , but it was Linnaeus who systematized them and made them into a workable code of nomenclature , distinguishing for the first time between species and varieties , and making the species the unit of measurement of classification .
What Linnaeus did , then , was to take fiat into the diffuse and chaotic pile ofknowledge about plantsby providing a substance of classification and a organization which , though imperfect as he well have sex , allow a plant to be labeled very simply but so in effect that it could not be obscure with any other . His genius was for order , his passion for classification , so that he classified everything , even the botanists whose Word of God he used .
Linnaeous and his “ Species Plantarum ” by Francis C. Coulter
