Description

Plant taxonomy is the science that finds, identifies, describes, classifies, and names plants. It is one of the main branches of taxonomy

In this collection there will be a bunch of plants with their Identification, classification and description .

This collection is useful for agricultural engineering and health students and everyone interested in plants

Study Set Content:
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TAXONOMY: THE STUDY OF IDENTIFICATION, 

CLASSIFICATION, AND NOMENCLATURE

A COMBINATION OF SCIENCE AND 

ART

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Taxonomy or Plant Systematics, despite what people would have 

you believe, really is not an exacting science in many ways

This statement mainly applies to the identification process, so 
we’ll start there.

Identification is very different from classification, which is 
even more problematic

There are several methods for identifying plants

Many books rely on matching a description or illustration with 
the plant you have in hand

Most people first go to books with color photos, but actually 
good line drawings can show more detail

Books with color photos or drawings often are arranged by 
color, but this is imprecise because of different color 
perceptions by different people, and some genera fall in many 
color categories, making finding the species difficult

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The vast majority of horticulture books use the color or form 

method for identifying rather than discrete, consistent 

characters

Besides Bailey’s 

Encyclopedia of Horticulture

and a few others, 

few horticulture books cover the whole spectrum of garden 
plants, leaving many possibilities out

Few horticulture books address a 

Key

for correct identification 

(more about keys in a moment)
If you’re interested in a special group of garden plants like 
roses, chrysanthemums, and cacti there are books covering 
those subjects in fair detail, making i.d. somewhat more 
practical

Currently, the best way to id garden plants is by learning to 
key to family and then consulting books on genera, if available

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Identification of native plants, by contrast, is often a surer thing; 

many states have floras of their native plants

Even better for the beginner are books specializing in one 
particular geographic area, such as Marin County

The majority of these i.d. books contain not only some 
illustrations, but 

dichotomous keys

for making a 

determination

The inexact part of this aspect of i.d. is because keys contain 
many inconsistencies and sometimes just plain mistakes

The other inexact part is that plants vary a lot in the wild, and 
no keys take all of the variation into account

For example, the genus 

Fragaria

(strawberry) has flowers with 

5 petals, but occasionally an individual will display 6 petals, 
instead. This could completely mislead the identifier because 
number of flower parts is heavily emphasized

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Dichotomous keys also require knowledge of terminology, since 

many terms are more precise than using ordinary words

With flowering plants, the starting point is usually 
determining if your plant is a 

monocot 

or 

dicot

Those two major categories are based on several traits, but 
the terms themselves refer to the number of seedling 
leaves—two for dicots, one for monocots

This trait is impractical to use in most cases, since plants lose 
their seedling leaves soon after germinating

There are also exceptions to the number of cotyledons, as 
there also are for most criteria to recognize these two groups

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Fortunately, there are other rules that help determine monocots 

and dicots, which are easier to apply

The two most important traits are leaf vein pattern (veination) 
and numbers of petals and sepals

Dicots usually have a network or featherlike pinnate pattern 
of veins while

Monocots have the major veins parallel to each other

However, there are occasional exceptions 

and

some leaves 

don’t show an obvious vein pattern

For petal and sepal number, dicots have 4 or 5 (except for 
some early dicots that have a large number),

Monocots have 3 or multiples of 3

Again there are occasional exceptions

There are other traits for the two groups but many, like pollen 
details and wood anatomy are difficult to deal with

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Cow parsnip, 

Heracleum maximum

, has leaves with a pinnate 

vein pattern and is a dicot

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