It’s human nature to search for new things and then give them names.

	Carl Linnaeus (1707-78), the master classifier.

We want to discover something new, whether it is a plant that has never been described, or a new form of antelope or a creature that lives at the bottom of the sea that nobody has ever seen before.

It’s human nature, too, to want to save your discovery, to conserve it so that others can see it, measure it, smell it, and above all (especially if the others are scientists) compare it with other, similar discoveries. This bird has red feathers, but that bird has grey feathers. What does that mean? Is the color of the feathers a feature of camouflage that helps the bird stay alive? What's the purpose of feathers, anyway? Sooner or later, the discoveries that we make and conserve will need to be identified and classified.

What do we mean by “classified” and “classification”?
We mean sorting things into groups and giving them names. Almost always, the groups reflect the relationships of the organisms in them. Birds, for example, may be classified as waders, shorebirds, songbirds, pigeons and doves, parrots, or swans, geese, and ducks. Color may not be a good tool for identifying and classifying birds, since some species change color at different times of the year. Feathers are usually the key; they grow in patterns in different species.

	Can you identify all the body parts of this scarab beetle? (Fred Powledge)

For beetles, it’s the arrangement of body parts (head, thorax, and abdomen) that count. Beetles are so numerous and so varied that classification will be aided by a key, which is not something you put into a lock on a door but rather a flow chart that you can use to gradually narrow down the characteristics of your find until you have identified your beetle through the process of elimination. (Keys are helpful for all sorts of other organisms, too.)

Such a key for beetles might start by asking if your specimen has a snout. If it does, you move on to further questions about antennae, then abdominal features, roundness of body, and so on. If the specimen doesn’t have a snout, you proceed through a different set of possibilities. In the end, you’ve narrowed the field down to a handful (or maybe just one) possibility.

Classification and identification of plants and animals have always been important, but they got really significant when explorers started returning to their home countries in Europe with organisms from foreign lands. There was a real danger that the same plant or bug would end up with half a dozen names in as many countries. Carl Linnaeus solved that problem.

Linnaeus (1707-78) was a Swedish botanist and plant explorer who published several books that explained his system of classification for plants and animals. Under what today is called the Linnaeum binomial system, each organism has a two-word name (bi = two, nomen = name): a genus, or generic, name, which is always written in Latin, followed by a species name. The genus name usually refers to the overall group to which the organism belongs, such as oak trees or alligators. The species name narrows the identification down to a single organism, and sometimes additionally honors the explorer who first found and described the organism, or the geographic spot where the organism was discovered.

Thus Solanum bombycinum Ochoa is a member of the genus Solanum, which includes the nightshade family of plants (eggplant, potato, tomato, and some poisonous plants), and was found in Bolivia by Carlos Ochoa and Ochoa’s assistant, Alberto Salas. Because classification involves much more than just naming a newly-found species, Ochoa also brought back a detailed description of his find: typical height, shapes, colors, and sizes of the plant’s parts, especially its leaves, and the fact that it was found at 2,000 meters above sea level “on the horse trail to Mojos” in Bolivia’s Department La Paz in February 1983.

Once a plant or animal has been found, described, named, and conserve where does it

Once a plant or animal has been found, described, named, and conserved, where does it go?

The answer, in the case of exotic animals, may be a protected wild area, or a zoo or game park. In the case of plants, especially those that are essential to feeding the world, there are usually two possibilities. Each of these possibilities has a Latin name: In situ is one, and ex situ is the other.

Explore the world of in situ conservation.

To learn more: There is a fine “Guide to Plant Collection & Identification” on the World Wide Web. It was created by Jane M. Bowles of the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Western Ontario, and it includes sections on identifying plants, plant collecting and identification, and other important information. The guide was adapted for the World Wide Web by T.A. Dickinson of the University of Toronto. It may be found at http://www.botany.utoronto.ca/courses/BOT307/B_How/janeTOC.html
(A hint: If you surf the Web very much for specific bits of information, you’ll find that addresses often change or disappear. If you have trouble finding this site, crank up a search engine [www.google.com is the king and queen of the jungle here], and simply search for “Jane M. Bowles plant guide”).

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