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Taxonomy is an organised system of naming, classifying and identifying organisms based on their biological characteristics. The hierarchical structure of taxonomy ensures that there’s always just one right way to classify any organism into the right categories, which makes it easy to identify the living things around you and the information about them. Whether you’re a student in high school biology or someone who loves plants and gardens, this article will help explain how to use taxonomy and why you should use it in the first place.
Why are plants classified in the first place? Simply put, plant taxonomy is used to make sense of the bewildering number of plants in the world. A huge number of factors play into how plants are classified, but more on that later. First, let’s take a look at what makes up this system of classification and how it works.
The foundation of classification
Information about plant classification, plant taxonomy, and hierarchical taxonomy. Also included is information on the kingdom, phylum, class, and order.
Botanical Kingdom
The botanical kingdom contains most of the living things on earth, including all plants and fungi. Most species are arranged in a hierarchical system with five levels: domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, and family.
For example, lions belong to Domain Eukarya; Kingdom Animalia; Phylum Chordata; Class Mammalia; Order Carnivora; Family Felidae. Note that an organism can belong to more than one kingdom—for example, humans are members of both Eukarya and Bacteria.
Plant Kingdom Overview
The Plant Kingdom is one of five main Kingdoms in taxonomic classification, containing all green plants (including mosses and liverworts) as well as their descendants.
Plants are multicellular organisms capable of photosynthesis. They are one of three groups of living things that make up Pongidae’s Kingdom Animalia (also called Metazoa or Eumetazoa), alongside fungi and protists.
The Division Pteridophyta
Pteridophyta is a subdivision of plants commonly known as ferns. Pteridophyta, in turn, is divided into two subdivisions: Polypodiophyta and Sphenophyta. In short, these classifications form a hierarchical taxonomy that starts with Division Pteridophyta and ends with species. Most often, however, you will be referring to a particular genus or family of plants.
Division Lycopodiophyta
Lycopodiophyta is a division of vascular plants, consisting of clubmosses, spikemosses, and quillworts. Lycopods are small herbaceous plants under 5 cm tall (such as the Lycopodium clavatum), but some members of the family Selaginellaceae (including spikemosses) can reach 3m in height.
Division Sphenophyta
Sphenophyta is a division, or major taxonomic group, of vascular plants. It belongs to the subkingdom Tracheobionta and contains three classes and six orders. The Sphenophyta also has living fossils in the form of horsetails (Equisetopsida), which date back to 450 million years ago.
Division Isoetopsida
The Division Isoetopsida includes organisms that fall under only one class, Isoetopsida. Organisms in this division are known as Isoetes, which is a genus of vascular plants that have non-photosynthetic stems and are composed of monocots.
The order Arillales and families Amorphophallaceae, Astereae, Cyphomandroideae, Halophytaceae, and Hypericaceae make up three groups in Isoetopsida.
Division Polypodiophyta (Ferns & Fern Allies)
Ferns and their allies, including horsetails, whisk ferns, bracken ferns, and quillworts, are a large group of vascular plants that are traditionally placed in the division Polypodiophyta. Polypodiophyta is one of three divisions of Pteridophyta (ferns and fern allies) and comprises approximately ten per cent of all known vascular plant species.
Conclusion
A hierarchical taxonomy was established by Carl Linnaeus in 1735, which he called the Systema Naturae (System of Nature). He placed plants in a hierarchical system of seven different ranks: kingdoms, classes, orders, genera, species, varieties, and cultivars. (A cultivar is an individual plant that has been grown by people, who have bred it to have certain traits that make it more useful to humans.) The genus and species of any given plant are the two most important taxonomic categories, as they are more specific than anything else in the hierarchy.
