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rejected the medieval practice of arranging plants according to their medicinal properties
or symbolic “signatures,”^37 and he argued that Latin should be the basis for naming living
things because it was the closest thing to a universal language.^38 Prior to Linnaeus, however,
the Latin names of plants typically consisted of strings of descriptive terms accompanied by
lists of vernacular synonyms. Such lengthy names were difficult, if not impossible, to memo-
rize. For example, the diminutive wildflower that so enchanted Linnaeus on his youthful
trip to Lapland bore the unwieldy moniker, Nummularia major, rigidioribus et rarius cre-
natu foliis flore purpureo gemello. Linnaeus rechristened it Linnaea borealis, and, in 1753, he
published his rules for binomial nomenclature (genus and species) in his landmark treatise
Species Plantarum.
Although Linnaeus did not invent binomial nomenclature, which was first used in plant
taxonomy by the Swiss botanist Caspar Bauhin,^39 it was Linnaeus who— by dint of his ency-
clopedic knowledge of natural history, forceful rhetoric, and supreme self- confidence—
popularized it and laid down strict rules barring any other method for the naming of plants,
in response to which his adoring fans throughout the world could only say, “Amen!”^40
Binomial nomenclature was indeed a godsend for both professional naturalists and amateur
botanists, who now had some hope of mastering the names of their local floras.
Over the course of his life, Linnaeus vacillated between pessimism and optimism regard-
ing the possibility of discovering the true “natural” system of classification devised by God.
Although he sometimes hinted that his sexual system might be equivalent to the natural
system, he admitted in his correspondence that it was “artificial” (that is, for convenience
only) rather than natural. To arrive at a natural system, he finally concluded, would require
a description of every plant on earth. Only then would the natural system of classification
become apparent. Put another way, Linnaeus’s view of plants was analogous to Dmitri
Mendeleev’s view of the elements: only after they were all arranged in a periodic table
according to their properties could one begin to understand the principles governing their
diversity. This explains Linnaeus’s lifelong obsession with collecting and describing plants
from around the world and his extreme frustration, leading to severe depression, when he
was prevented from doing so.
Of one thing he was absolutely certain: if anyone could discover the natural system,
it was he. His supreme self- confidence coupled with a near manic enthusiasm and phe-
nomenal productivity had much to do with his unprecedented success in convincing oth-
ers to adopt the rules he established for classifying plants. His new sexual system, first
published in Systema Naturae in 1735, gradually displaced all previous methods of plant
classification.
Although he was equivocal about species, in Philosophia Botanica (1751) Linnaeus fol-
lowed Ray and Tournefort in declaring that all genera were “natural.”^41 Each genus, he
believed, was created “such as it is; and for this reason it is not to be capriciously split or
stuck [to another] for pleasure, or according to each man’s theory.”^42 But despite his aspira-
tions to become a “second Adam,” and notwithstanding his conviction that he was divinely
inspired, he ultimately owned to a more modest role. He readily conceded, for example,
that the classes he had designated in his sexual system of classification were artificial:Artificial classes are substitutes for natural ones, until the discovery is made of all
the natural classes, which more genera, which have not been discovered, will reveal.^43