Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linneaus
His Childhood
Carl’s father started teaching him Latin, religion and geography when he was quite young, in fact, one account tells us that he learnt Latin even before learning Swedish as his family used Latin a lot more. When he was seven, Linnaeus’ father decided to hire a tutor for him. Throughout school, he rarely studied and often went to the countryside to look for plant. By the age of five, he had his own garden, which inspired him to learn more about plants and how they worked.
In his last year of Lower school, his headmaster, Daniel Lannerus, noticed Carl’s interest in botany and having quite an interest in botany himself, showed Carl his garden.
Expedition to Lapland
Linnaeus, in a hope to find new plants decided to go on an expedition to Lapland, which turned out to be one of the most important parts of his career. The observations he made on this trip formed the basis of his book ‘Flora Lapponica’ which he wrote in 1737. He took six months to complete this expedition and also kept a journal which was published in 1811 as ‘Lachesis Lapponica: A Tour in Lapland’. He returned from his 2,000 km (1,200 miles) long expedition on the 10th of October having gathered many plants, birds and rocks.
Why do we use Taxonomy?
By classifying living things into defined hierarchies and giving them individual names we create order which allows us more easily to study the extremely chaotic world of nature. Carl Linnaeus was most famous for creating a system of naming plants and animals—a system we still use today. This system is known as the binomial system, where each species of plant and animal is given a genus name (a general name) followed by a specific name (species), with both names being in Latin. For example, we are Homo sapiens. Homo is the genus that includes modern humans and closely-related specie. Linnaeus named over 12,000 species of plants and animals, although some have had to be renamed because we know more about them now. Linnaeus
His Childhood
Carl’s father started teaching him Latin, religion and geography when he was quite young, in fact, one account tells us that he learnt Latin even before learning Swedish as his family used Latin a lot more. When he was seven, Linnaeus’ father decided to hire a tutor for him. Throughout school, he rarely studied and often went to the countryside to look for plant. By the age of five, he had his own garden, which inspired him to learn more about plants and how they worked.
In his last year of Lower school, his headmaster, Daniel Lannerus, noticed Carl’s interest in botany and having quite an interest in botany himself, showed Carl his garden.
Expedition to Lapland
Linnaeus, in a hope to find new plants decided to go on an expedition to Lapland, which turned out to be one of the most important parts of his career. The observations he made on this trip formed the basis of his book ‘Flora Lapponica’ which he wrote in 1737. He took six months to complete this expedition and also kept a journal which was published in 1811 as ‘Lachesis Lapponica: A Tour in Lapland’. He returned from his 2,000 km (1,200 miles) long expedition on the 10th of October having gathered many plants, birds and rocks.
Why do we use Taxonomy?
By classifying living things into defined hierarchies and giving them individual names we create order which allows us more easily to study the extremely chaotic world of nature. Carl Linnaeus was most famous for creating a system of naming plants and animals—a system we still use today. This system is known as the binomial system, where each species of plant and animal is given a genus name (a general name) followed by a specific name (species), with both names being in Latin. For example, we are Homo sapiens. Homo is the genus that includes modern humans and closely-related specie. Linnaeus named over 12,000 species of plants and animals, although some have had to be renamed because we know more about them now. Linnaeus