Cultivated plant taxonomy
Cultivated plant taxonomy is one part of the study of horticultural botany which is mostly carried out in botanical gardens, large nurseries, universities, or government departments.
This Code serves not only the scientific interests of formal nomenclature, it also caters for the special utilitarian needs of people dealing with the plants of commerce.
Cultigen is a general-purpose term for plants that have been deliberately altered or specially selected by humans, while cultivar is a formal classification category.
[20] William T. Stearn (1911–2001), taxonomic botanist, classical scholar and author of the book Botanical Latin has commented that "cultivated plants [cultigens] are mankind's most vital and precious heritage from remote antiquity".
[21] Cultigens of our most common economic plants probably date back to the first settled communities of the Neolithic Revolution 10,000 to 12,000 years ago although their exact time and place of true origin will probably remain a mystery.
[24] Migrating people would take their plant seeds and cuttings with them; there is evidence of early Fertile Crescent cereal cultigens being transferred from Western Asia to surrounding lands.
As early as the 5th century BCE the Greek philosopher Hippo expressed the opinion that cultigens (as we call them now) were produced from wild plants as the result of the care bestowed on them by man, a revolutionary view at a time when they were regarded as the special creation and gift of the gods.
[26] In devising ways of classifying organisms the philosopher Aristotle (384–322 BCE) established the important idea of a fundamentum divisionis — the principle that groups can be progressively subdivided.
[27] The earliest scientific (rather than utilitarian) approach to plants is attributed to Aristotle's student Theophrastus (371–286 BCE), known as the "father of botany".
[29] The utilitarian approach, classifying plants according to their medicinal properties, is exemplified by the work of Roman nobleman, scientist and historian, Pliny the Elder (29–79 CE) author of Natural History.
In the Middle Ages the book of hours, early herbals, illuminated manuscripts and economic records indicate that plants grown by the Romans found their way into monastery gardens.
For example, in 827 CE the following herbs were mentioned in the poem Hortulus by Walafrid Strabo as growing in the monastery garden of St Gallen in Switzerland: sage, rue, southernwood, wormwood, horehound, fennel, German iris, lovage, chervil, Madonna lily, opium poppy, clary, mint, betony, agrimony, catmint, radish, gallica rose, bottle gourd and melon.
From about 1400 CE European expansion established Latin as the common language of scholars and it was adopted for biological nomenclature.
In 1623 Gaspard Bauhin published his Pinax theatre botanici[35] an attempt at a comprehensive compilation of all plants known at that time: it included about 6000 kinds.
[33] English herbalist John Parkinson's Paradisi in Sole ... (1629) lists 57 apple "cultivars", 62 pears, 61 plums, 35 cherries and 22 peaches.
Up to about 1650 CE plants had been grouped either alphabetically or according to utilitarian folk taxonomy – by their medicinal uses or whether they were trees, shrubs or herbs.
[39] In Institutiones Rei Herbariae he listed about 10,000 different plants, which he called species, organised into 698 genera with illustrations.
[40] The establishment of this precursor of scientific classification vastly improved the organisation of plant variation into approximately equivalent groups or ranks and many of his genera were later taken up by Carl Linnaeus.
[41] There was still at this time no common agreement on the way to present plant names so they ranged in length from one word to lengthy descriptive sentences.
This highlighted difficulties in communication about plants, the replication of their descriptions, and the importance of an agreed way of presenting, publishing and applying their names.
It was the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus who finally put order into this situation as he attempted to name all the known organisms of his day.
His views revealed both his prejudice, his stance on special creation, and his recognition of the difficulties entailed in cultivated plant taxonomy: "anthophiles … practice a floral science all their own, grasped only by their devotees; no botanist in his senses will enlist in their camp.
Although economic herbs and spices had a long history in trade, and there are good records of cultivar distribution by the Romans, European botanical and horticultural exploration rapidly increased in the 19th century with the colonial expansion taking place at the time.
In 1865 German botanist Karl Koch, who became General Secretary of the Berlin Horticultural Society, expressed resentment at the continued use of Latin for cultigen names.
After World War II the responsibility for the Botanical Code was taken up by the International Association for Plant Taxonomy and meetings to discuss revisions are held at six-yearly intervals, the latest being in 2005.
[52] In horticulture at this time there existed all the problems that had confronted botanists in the 19th century – a plethora of names of various length, written and published in many languages with much duplication.
As a result of general dissatisfaction and a submission from the Royal Horticultural Society the Règles de Nomenclature Horticole was established.
The question remains as to whether the classification categories of cultivar, Group and grex are the most appropriate and efficient way to deal with this broad range of plant variation.
