DENDROLOGY AND SOCIETY
SCIENTIFIC NAMES OF WOODY PLANTS AND THEIR MEANINGS
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Question
[CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
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it is continuously being changed.
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it is the most common spoken language in the world.
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it is very descriptive, doesn’t change, and was used by scholars.
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None of the above
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Detailed explanation-1: -The protocol for naming species was invented in the 1700s by Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. Linnaeus created the system of “binomial nomenclature, ‘’ which uses only two designations–genus and specific epithet as the species name.
Detailed explanation-2: -They were invented because new words were needed to name newly described structures. For hundreds of years they had to be in Latin (or Greek) because books about biology and medicine were written in Latin (with a few entries in Greek), which was the international language of science.
Detailed explanation-3: -The most important reason is that there is only one corrrect Latin name for any plant species. It is the rule (see for yourself here). There can be hundreds of common names for the same plant, or conversely, the same common name can be used for hundreds of different species.