Binomial Nomenclature

The system of naming of properly identified plants and animals according to the nomenclatural system is known as nomenclature. In binomial nomenclature the scientific name of an organism consists of two names in Latin. The first is the generic name and second is the specific name. The name of scientist who first described the plant is also written after the species in an abbreviated or full form e.g. the scientific name name of potato is Solanum tuberosum Linn where Solanum is genus and tuberosum is species and Linn is the abbreviated form of Linnaenus. Binomial system was at first used by Swedish naturalist Casper Bauhin (1560-1624). That was elaborated by Carolus Linnaeus in his species Plantarum 1753. However, the rules of nomenclature system had their beginning in Linnaeus "Critica Botanica" in 1737. Critica Botanica was written primarily to explain the taxonomic and was adopted by the International Botanical congress held in Vienna, 1905. According to Binomial nomenclature system the generic name of plant begin with the capital letter and the specific name is always proceeded with by the generic name. The scientific names are always italicized or underlined.

Taxonomic hierarchy : The arrangement of taxonomic categories in their proper order on the basis of their taxonomic ranks is called taxonomic hierarchy. In taxonomic hierarchy the kingdom represents the category of highest rank while the species represents the lowermost rank. The categories of classifications are kingdom, sub kingdom, Division/Phylum, Class, Sub class, Order, Family, Genus and Species.