How Are Plants Named?

Taxonomy is the scientific system for naming and classifying living organisms, including plants, based on shared traits and evolutionary relationships. In addition to their scientific names, plants often have common names, which are a bit like nicknames.

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Scientific Names and Taxonomy

Table of contents heading: Scientific Names and Taxonomy

Queen Victoria agave (Agave victoriae-reginae) is displayed next to its plant label, which shows its common name, scientific name, native range, family, and accession number. Photo by Judi Danner. | The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens.

To facilitate communication across different regions and languages, each living thing is given a scientific name in Latin or a Latinized form. This way, scientists worldwide can be sure they are discussing the same organism. This naming tradition started when Latin was the common language used by European scientists to write about what they found, regardless of their native language.

But how do scientists pick which Latin names to use? Taxonomy is the term for the way scientists organize and name the natural world. Traditionally, scientists grouped living things based on physical features. Today, genetics, the study of how traits are passed from parent to offspring through genes, plays a major role in understanding how organisms evolved and are related, changing how we organize and classify them. Scientists use a classification system that moves from broad to specific categories. At the broadest level are . make up one kingdom (additional kingdoms include fungi, animals, and microbial groups).