A botanical illustrator is a person who paints, sketches or otherwise illustrates botanical subjects such as trees and flowers. The job requires great artistic skill, attention to fine detail, and technical botanical knowledge. Typical illustrations will be in watercolour, in life size, or if not, the scale shown, and show face and reverse of leaves, flowers, bud, seed and root system.

The use of illustrations was frequently seen in the herbals, seed catalogues and popular works of natural history. The illustrations produced during the eighteenth and nineteenth century are regarded as both appealing and scientifically valid. The finer detail of the printing processes, greatly improving at this time, allowed artists such as Franz and Ferdinand Bauer to depict the minute aspects of the subject. The use of exploded details would further illustrate the description given in the accompanying text. These details allowed a non scientific audience to go some way in identifying the species, the widening interest in natural history and horticulture was an inducement to the production of many Floras and regular publications.

Many books and publication continued to use the illustrators, even after printed matter began to incorporate photography. It would be many years before the colour printing would equal the illustrators plates. The accuracy and craft of the illustrators had developed in tandem with the botanists concerned, the work came to be accepted as important to the botanists and their institutions. The illustrated publication, Curtis's Botanical Magazine (1787), was to eventually appoint an official artist. The 220 year old magazine, long associated with the Linnaean Society and Kew Gardens, is now primarily one of finer botanical illustration. A stream of the finest illustrators to appear in print have been featured in the magazine.

The contribution of botanical illustrators continues to be praised and sought, very fine examples continue to be produced. In the 1980s, Celia Rosser undertook to illustrate every Banksia species for the masterwork, The Banksias. When another species was described after its publication,Banksia rosserae, it was named to honour her mammoth accomplishment. Other illustrators, such as the profuse illustratorMatilda Smith, have been specifically honoured for this work.

Botanical illustration is sometimes used as a type for attribution of a botanical name to a taxon. The ability of botanists to conserve a dried specimens, or restrictions in safe transport, has meant illustrations have been nominated as the type for that name. Many minute plants, which may only be viewed under a microscope, are often identified by an illustration to overcome the difficulties in using slide mounted specimens. The standards for this are by international agreement (Art 37.5 of the Vienna Code, 2006).

Famous botanical illustrators include:

• Alois Auer
• James Andrew
• Elizabeth Blackwell (illustrator)
• Ferdinand Bauer
• Franz Bauer
• ‎Harry Bolus
• Olivia Marie Braida-Chiusano
• Priscilla Susan Bury
• Gillian Condy
• Dioscorides
• Sydenham Edwards
• Georg Dionysius Ehret
• Anne-Marie Evans
• Walter Hood Fitch
• Frances W. Horne
• Barbara Jeppe
• Kawahara Keiga
• Cythna Letty
• Christine Marais
• Margaret Mee
• Philippa Nikulinsky
• Marianne North
• Sydney Parkinson
• Jenny Phillips Botanical Artist
• Pierre-Joseph Redouté
• Lewis Roberts (naturalist)
• Celia Rosser
• Ellis Rowan
• Vera Scarth-Johnson
• Jill Smythies
• Matilda Smith
• James Sowerby
• Elizabeth Twining
• Ellaphie Ward-Hilhorst

The Linnaean Society of London awards the Ji

The formal system of naming species of living things is called binomial nomenclature (especially in botany, but also used by zoologists), binominal nomenclature (since 1953 the technically correct form in zoology), or binary nomenclature. This system of naming was invented byLinnaeus. The up-to-date version of the rules of naming for animals and plants are laid out in the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature and the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature respectively.

The essence of the binomial system of naming is this: each species name has two parts, the genus name and the species name (also known as the specific epithet), for example, Homo sapiens, which is the scientific name of the human species. Every two-part scientific name is either formed out of (modern scientific)Latin or is a Latinized version of words from other languages.

The two-part name of a species is commonly known as its Latin name. However,biologists and philologists prefer to use the term scientific name rather than "Latin name", because the words used to create these names are not always from the Latin language, even though words from other languages have usually been Latinized in order to make them suitable for this purpose. Species names are often derived from Ancient Greek words, or words from numerous other languages. Frequently species names are based on the surname of a person, such as a well-regarded scientist, or are a Latinized version of a relevant place name.

Carl von Linné (also known as Linnaeus) chose to use a two-word naming system, and did not use what over time came to be a full seven-category system (kingdom-phylum-class-order-family-genus-species.) Linnaeus chose a binomial nomenclature scheme, using only the genus name and the specific name or epithet which together form the whole name of the species. For example, humans belong to genus Homo and their specific name is sapiens. Humans as a species are thus classified as Homo sapiens. The first letter of the first name, the genus, is always capitalized, while that of the second is not, even when derived from a proper noun such as the name of a person or place. Conventionally, all names of genera and lower taxa are always italicised, while family names and higher taxa are printed in plain text. Species can be divided into a further rank, giving rise to a trinomial name for a subspecies (trinomenfor animals,ternary namefor plants).

Biologists, when using a name of a species, usually also give the authority and date of the species description. Thus zoologists will give the name of a particular sea snail species as: Patella vulgataLinnaeus, 1758. The name "Linnaeus" tells the reader who it was that described the species; 1758 is the date of the publication in which the original description can be found, in this case the bookSystema Naturae.

History

The adoption of a system of binomial nomenclature is due to Swedishbotanist and physicianCarl von Linné also known by his Latinized name Carolus Linnaeus (1707–1778). Linnaeus attempted to describe the entire known natural world, giving every species (mineral, plant, or animal) a two-part name. This was an improvement over descriptive names that involved a whole descriptive phrase comprising numerous words. However, binomial nomenclature in various forms had existed before Linnaeus, and was used by the Bauhins, who lived nearly two hundred years earlier.

Value

The value of the binomial nomenclature system derives primarily from its economy, its widespread use, and the stability of names it generally favors:

• Clarity. It avoids the confusions that can be created when attempting to use common names to refer to a species. Common names often differ even from one part of a country to another part, and certainly vary from one country to another. In contrast, the scientific name can be used all over the world, in all languages, avoiding confusion and difficulties of translation.
• Stability. The procedures associated with establishing binomial nomenclature tend to favor stability. Even though such stability as exists is far from absolute, it is still advantageous. For example, when species are transferred between genera (as not uncommonly happens as a result of new knowledge), if possible the species descriptor is kept the same. Similarly if what were previously thought to be distinct species are demoted from species to a lower rank, former species names may be retained as infraspecific descriptors.

Despite the rules favoring stability and uniqueness, in practice a single species may have several scientific names in circulation, depending largely on taxonomic point of view (see synonymy).

Derivation

The genus name and specific descriptor may come from any source. Often they are ordinary New Latin words, but they may also come from Ancient Greek, from a place, from a person (often a naturalist), a name from the local language etc. In fact, taxonomists come up with specific descriptors from a variety of sources, including in-jokes and puns. However, names are always treated gra