God, the Bible tells us, gave Adam the job of naming the animals. But it was Carl Linnaeus who figured out a good way to do it. Linnaeus, also known as Carolus Linnaeus or Carol von Linne, was the ...

A gardener friend of ours used to object to calling a plant by its Latin name. She heard it as pretense and obfuscation. But after the sage incident, she conceded that there was some point to it.

Carl Linnaeus is most famous as the father of modern taxonomy. What’s not so well known is that in his effort to manage vast amounts of data, he came up with a revolutionary invention: the index card.

There are places on the moon named after him. His face appears on Swedish currency, and an era of scientific history bears his name. But Carl Linnaeus is best known for creating the system of ...

Rudbeckia hirta. Solanum lycopersicum. Acer saccharum. Have you ever seen these names on plant tags or seed packets and wondered where they came from? We can thank Carl Linnaeus for taxonomy, the ...

But in the 1730s, the self-proclaimed “prince of botany” made a contribution to taxonomy that, at the time, was just as profound as any of his other achievements. After realizing that floral sex parts ...