In botany, the phrase ''ordo naturalis'', 'natural order', was once used for what today is a
family
Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...
. Its origins lie with
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné,#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming o ...
who used the phrase when he referred to natural groups of plants in his lesser-known work, particularly ''
Philosophia Botanica
''Philosophia Botanica'' ("Botanical Philosophy", ed. 1, Stockholm & Amsterdam, 1751.) was published by the Swedish naturalist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) who greatly influenced the development of botanical Taxonomy (biology), taxono ...
''. In his more famous works the ''
Systema Naturae
' (originally in Latin written ' with the Orthographic ligature, ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Sweden, Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the syste ...
'' and the ''
Species Plantarum
' (Latin for "The Species of Plants") is a book by Carl Linnaeus, originally published in 1753, which lists every species of plant known at the time, classified into genus, genera. It is the first work to consistently apply binomial nomenclature ...
'', plants were arranged according to his artificial "Sexual system", and Linnaeus used the word for an artificial unit. In those works, only genera and species (sometimes varieties) were "real"
taxa
In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; : taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular name and ...
.
In nineteenth-century works such as the ''
Prodromus'' of and the ''
Genera Plantarum
''Genera Plantarum'' is a publication of Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778). The first edition was issued in Leiden, 1737. The fifth edition served as a complementary volume to ''Species Plantarum'' (1753). Article 13 of the Internat ...
'' of Bentham & Hooker, the word did indicate taxa that are now given the rank of family. Contemporary French works used the word for these same taxa. In the first international ''Rules'' of
botanical nomenclature
Botanical nomenclature is the formal, scientific naming of plants. It is related to, but distinct from taxonomy (biology), taxonomy. Plant taxonomy is concerned with grouping and classifying plants; Botany, botanical nomenclature then provides na ...
of 1906 the word ''family'' () was assigned to this rank, while the term ''order'' () was reserved for a higher rank, for what in the nineteenth century had often been named a (plural ).
The ''
'' provides for names published in the rank of in Art 18.2: normally, these are to be accepted as family names.
[ Article 18.2]
Some plant families retain the name they were given by pre-Linnaean authors, recognised by Linnaeus as "natural orders" (e.g. ''
Palmae'' or ''
Labiatae''). Such names are known as
descriptive
In the study of language, description or descriptive linguistics is the work of objectively analyzing and describing how language is actually used (or how it was used in the past) by a speech community. François & Ponsonnet (2013).
All aca ...
family names.
References
{{Reflist
Plant taxonomy