Overview

Beginning in the sixteenth century, as botanists explored more areas of the world and identified more and more species, the problem of how to best classify all these species became critical. By the mid-nineteenth century a number of botanists had devised classification schemes that were based on using a large number of traits. As the century progressed there was also greater interest not only in plants' external form or morphology, but also in internal structures and in microscopic examination of plant tissue. With this trend came more work on plant development, on how plant structures arose, enlarged, and changed over time. This increased morphological knowledge improved classification of plants by providing more information on which to base categorizing decisions.

Background

The basic classification system used by nineteenth-century botanists grew out of the work of botanist Carl Linnaeus...