Linnaeus Publishes Species Plantarum

1753

The Swedish naturalist named every plant he knew in a binomial system - genus and species, genus and species - and set life itself in orderly Latin pairs. Modern biology begins here. For Linnaeus, the project was pious: God's creation, at last properly filed. The two-volume work catalogued roughly 7,300 species and established the starting point for botanical nomenclature that scientists still use today.