Classification in biology, is the identification, naming, and grouping of organisms into a formal system. The vast numbers of living forms are namedand arranged in an orderly manner so that biologists all over the world canbe sure they know the exact organism that is being examined and discussed.Groups of organisms must be defined by the selection of importantcharacteristics, or shared traits, that make the members of each groupsimilar to one another and unlike members of other groups. Modernclassification schemes also attempt to place groups into categories thatwill reflect an understanding of the evolutionary processes underlying thesimilarities and differences among organisms. Such categories form a kindof pyramid, or hierarchy, in which the different levels should representthe different degrees of evolutionary relationship. The hierarchy extendsupward from several million species, each made up of individual organismsthat are closely related, to a few kingdoms, each containing largeassemblages of organisms, many of which are only distantly related.Carolus Linnaeus is probably the single most dominant figure in systematicclassification. Born in 1707, he had a mind that was orderly to the extreme.People sent him plants from all over the world, and he would devise a wayto relate them. At the age of thirty-two he was the author of fourteenbotanical works. His two most famous were Genera Plantarum, developing anartificial sexual system, and Species Plantarum, a famous work where henamed and classified every plant known to him, and for the first time gaveeach plant a binomial. This binomial system was a vast improvement oversome of the old descriptive names for plants used formerly. Before Linnaeus,Catnip was known as: "Nepeta floribus interrupte spicatis pedunculatis"which is a brief description of the plant. Linnaeus named it Nepetacataria--cataria meaning, "pertaining to cats". The binomial nomenclatureis not only more precise and sta...
