On some of my posts, I have used Latin to name the plants and trees found in the pictures I have shown you. There are a number of good reasons why trees and plants have been given these Latin names.
- Some trees and plants are not found only in one location. They can be found all over the world. This means that the same plant or organism can be identified all over the world no matter what language you speak.
- Each different plant and tree that is named in Latin is grouped together. This will make studying specific species easy.
Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) came up with a two word, binomial nomenclature system to classify all plants and animals. This system groups all organisms in a hierarchal system that starts off with Kingdom then into division, Class, Order, Family, Genus and last of all Species. An example of this can be seen below;
Red Campion is broken down like this;
Kingdom: | Plantae |
Division: | Magnoliophyta |
Class: | Magnoliopsida |
Order: | Caryophyllales |
Family: | Caryophyllaceae |
Genus: | Silene |
Species: | dioica |
The most important parts of this grouping system are the last two groupings, Genus and Species. (You don’t really have to bother with the other groupings) This is because it is these two groupings that form the Latin names for all the plants and trees which you can see all around you. It is not just plants and trees that use the Linnaeus system. Every organism is classed in this way, producing a Latin name for every organism in the world.
