Arts & Leisure Gardening

Ask a Master Gardener: Carl Linnaeus, father of taxonomy

A STATE OF a youthful Carl Linnaeus by American sculptor Robert Berks graces the Heritage Garden in the Chicago Botanic Garden. photo / Bronislaw Drozka

Rudbeckia hirta. Solanum lycopersicum. Acer saccharum. Have you ever seen these names on plant tags or seed packets and wondered where they came from? We can thank Carl Linnaeus for taxonomy, the study of categorizing and naming organisms, and binomial nomenclature, the precise, two-termed naming system we use today.