CHARLES LINNAEUS
The great botanist who gave his name and surname to plants
Linnaeus immediately demonstrated a remarkable talent in classifying plants. He soon
obtained a teaching assistantship, and began to explore in the Swedish countryside and in
Lapland. The young scientist immediately began to catalog plants with a system of his own
invention. Linnaeus decided that the description of each single species would have two
terms: the first referring to the genus, the second to the species.
Carl Linnaeus also demonstrated that plants reproduce and gave names to all parts of
flowers. He created a taxonomic scheme divided into five categories: variety, species,
genus, order and class.