He made the first attempt to classify plants. History of plant classification. Wild and cultivated plants

Everyone respects unusual plants. To have on your windowsill rare plant important to keep the secrets of the content. In the above selection, we tried to present a collection of tips in order to avoid diseases when keeping certain flower. The subtleties of breeding many groups of flowers do not differ. exotic plant requires careful fulfillment of conditions. It will be correct to determine for subsequent actions which group your pet belongs to.

How plants are named

PLANT SYSTEMATICS, the branch of botany concerned with natural classification plants. The founder of taxonomy is considered to be the brilliant Swedish botanist, naturalist Carl Linnaeus (born in 1707). Before developing his plant classification system, Carl Linnaeus studied medicine.

The first botanist is considered to be the Greek philosopher and naturalist Theophrastus (371-286 BC), a student of Aristotle who lived in the 4th century. BC. He wrote two books on plants: History of Plants (lat. Historia plantarum) and Causes of Plants (lat. De causis plantarum), which provide the basics of plant classification and physiology, describe about 500 plant species that have been subjected to many comments and often reprinted. For this great work, Theophrastus is deservedly called the "father" of botany.

Prior to Darwin, classification systems either sought to reveal an imaginary divine model for Creation, or grouped plants and animals according to controversial and rather artificial criteria, giving them long and ornate names. However, after the discovery of evolution, biologists began to give plants and animals names that reflected their similarities and revealed their evolutionary relationships with other species.

Rosa silvestris vulgaris flore odorato incarnato. But Carl Linnaeus was the creator of a strict scientific language in botany, so he called it Rosa canina. No other rose could be meant by this name.

The beginning of the binary system of naming plants, used to this day, was laid in the 18th century. Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus. His taxonomy, which anticipated the theory of natural selection, was based on the number and arrangement of the reproductive organs, mainly the stamens and carpels (the reproductive structures of the flower). Linnaeus created a huge variety of genera and assigned each species to a genus. Currently, taxonomists group genera into orders, orders into classes, and classes into phyla.

Viola pedata is the botanical name for the petiolate violet native to eastern North America, so named because of its characteristic multi-lobed leaves. Viola tricolor subsp. macedonica (Violet tricolor subspecies Macedonian) is more correct than Viola tricolor.

Most of the specific epithets describe some characteristic of the plant - its color, shape or number of petals, habitat or flowering time. These words usually come from Latin or Greek. Here is a selection of epithets and their meanings:

Shape and size

Habit

habitat

Secrets of plants

It is unlikely that at least one person living today knows who the first people were who noticed all kinds of differences between plants and learned how to use their unique properties. No one, of course, will name the names of these ancient researchers who began to carry out the work so necessary for mankind as the classification of plants.

The first timid attempts to classify plants were based only on the external similarity of the materials under study. That is why very often their results were erroneous. However, by studying plant samples more deeply, scientists received more and more new facts that significantly advanced the study of the plant world.

The modern classification of plants, like most classifications of living organisms, is based on the well-known theory of Darwin. It is a kind of family tree with numerous branches. Natural confirmation of the correctness of this theory are various paleontological finds. Analysis of the structure of ancient extinct plants and its comparison with modern specimens make it possible to judge the origin of species and determine antiquity modern plants. And the result of such studies is the association into a group of plants that have a common "ancestor". During such experiments, botanists carefully trace the evolutionary path of each specimen and classify it.

It is conditionally possible to divide the plant world into higher and lower plants. The lower ones are algae and lichens, and the higher ones are mosses, gymnosperms, ferns and flowering plants. Accordingly, these categories are divided into different departments.

The largest can be called the department of angiosperms or flowering plants, which includes trees, shrubs, wild and cultural organisms. It should be noted that they all differ significantly from each other in shape and size, as well as life expectancy and many other properties. It was in order to calmly navigate this riot of wildlife that the classification of flowering plants was created. She united a huge number of families among themselves, creating such groups and subgroups as species, genus, order, class and division. These groups were created on the basis of structural features, common methods of development and reproduction of plants.

The classification of plants underwent great changes in 1789. The book, which was written by the famous botanist Antoine Laurent Jussier, entitled "Plant genera arranged in a natural order", divided the flowering department into 15 classes, within which there were about 100 "natural orders". This work brought worldwide fame to the French botanist, and most of the names he invented are still in use today.

Some wildlife lovers do not seriously engage in such a rather complex science as botany, but they like to breed indoor plants. Such home "scientists" may well come in handy houseplant classification, which divides this section into three groups: plants of moderate lighting, shade-tolerant and light-loving.

The first group includes almost all known indoor plants. Citrus fruits, hydrangeas, primroses and begonias thrive in moderate light.

The second group is ferns, ivy, indoor grapes and boxwood, plants that survive quite calmly in shady corners of the garden and vegetable garden.

The third group is the children of the sun, cacti, eucalyptus and coleus, plants that cannot imagine their own life without the gentle rays of the sun and quickly die from lack of lighting.

The classification of plants is not of fundamental importance for lovers of lush greenery and natural beauty in the house. The main thing for them is timely top dressing, watering, changing the soil and sufficient lighting for their pets. After all, in return, plants bring comfort, and an atmosphere of peace, and only the charm of wildlife subject to them

CLASSIFICATION OF PLANTS

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Plant kingdom classification

To understand the diversity of plants, botanists studied the features of their structure and, according to the commonality of signs - the degree of kinship - they classified them into groups - taxa (from the Greek "taxis" - construction, arrangement in a certain order).

The main taxa are department, class, order (series), family, genus and species.

Species is the basic smallest unit of classification in the system of living organisms.
A genus is a large systematic unit that unites related species.
A family is a systematic group that unites related genera.
Order (row) - unites related families.
Class - combines orders.
Department - unites close classes.

The scientific names of all living organisms, including plants, are usually given in Latin. The name of the species consists of two words: the first is the name of the genus, the second is the specific epithet. For example, durum wheat - triticum duruml. In different countries, this plant may be called differently, but the scientific name triticum duruml is clear to all scientists.

Therefore, in scientific works on botany, guides and reference books, along with the Russian names of plants, names are also given in Latin.

The systematic position of all departments of the plant kingdom reflects the sequence of their appearance on Earth and the complication of the structure of the body associated with changes in living conditions.

Paleobotany (the science that studies fossil plants) and systematics restored the picture of the development of the plant world. This can be clearly shown in the form of a branched tree, called the genealogical tree of the development of the plant world.

The tree trunk is the primary green organisms;
large branches - the departments of still uncomplicated plants that have arisen from them;
smaller branches are the changed descendants of these departments;
the ends of the branches are modern forms.

Some branches of this tree have dried up - these are extinct plants that have disappeared due to some conditions, others, on the contrary, have grown magnificently, forming many branches. These are the plants that dominate the present period on Earth.

The plant kingdom is striking in its greatness and diversity. Wherever we go, in whatever corner of the planet we find ourselves, everywhere you can meet representatives of the plant world. Even the ice of the Arctic is no exception for their habitat. What is the plant kingdom? Its species are varied and numerous. What is the general characteristic of the plant kingdom? How can they be classified? Let's try to figure it out.

General characteristics of the plant kingdom

All living organisms can be divided into four kingdoms: plants, animals, fungi and bacteria.

The signs of the plant kingdom are as follows:

are eukaryotes, that is, plant cells contain nuclei;
are autotrophs, that is, they form from inorganic organic matter in the process of photosynthesis due to the energy of sunlight;
lead a relatively sedentary lifestyle;
unlimited in growth throughout life;
contain plastids and cell walls made of cellulose;
starch is used as a reserve nutrient;
the presence of chlorophyll.

Botanical classification of plants

The plant kingdom is divided into two sub-kingdoms:

lower plants;
higher plants.

Sub-kingdom "lower plants"

This sub-kingdom includes algae - the simplest in structure and the most ancient plants. However, the world of algae is very diverse and numerous.

Most of them live in or on water. But there are algae that grow in the soil, on trees, on rocks and even in ice.

The body of algae is a thallus or thallus, which has neither root nor shoots. Algae do not have organs and various tissues; they absorb substances (water and mineral salts) through the entire surface of the body.

The sub-kingdom "lower plants" consists of eleven divisions of algae.

Significance for humans: release oxygen; are used for food; used to obtain agar-agar; are used as fertilizers.

Sub-kingdom "higher plants"

Higher plants include organisms that have well-defined tissues, organs (vegetative: root and shoot, generative) and individual development (ontogenesis) of which is divided into embryonic (embryonic) and postembryonic (post-embryonic) periods.

Higher plants are divided into two groups: spore and seed.

Spore plants spread by means of spores. Reproduction requires water. Seed plants are propagated by seeds. Reproduction does not require water.

Spore plants are divided into the following sections:

bryophytes;
lycopsid;
horsetail;
ferns.

Seeds are divided into the following departments:

angiosperms;
gymnosperms.

Let's consider them in more detail.

Department "bryophytes"

Bryophytes are low-growing herbaceous plants whose body is divided into a stem and leaves, they have a kind of roots - rhizoids, the function of which is to absorb water and fix the plant in the soil. In addition to photosynthetic and basic tissue, mosses have no other tissues. Most mosses are perennials and grow only in damp places. Bryophytes - the most ancient and most simple group. At the same time, they are quite diverse and numerous and are inferior in the number of species only to angiosperms. There are about 25 thousand of their species.

Bryophytes are divided into two classes - hepatic and leafy.

Liverworts are the most ancient mosses. Their body is a branched flat thallus. They live mainly in the tropics. Representatives of the liverworts: mosses merchantsia and riccia.

Leafy mosses have shoots that consist of stems and leaves. A typical representative is cuckoo flax moss.

Mosses can reproduce both sexually and asexually. Asexual can be either vegetative, when the plant reproduces by parts of stems, thallus or leaves, or spore. During sexual reproduction in mosses, special organs are formed in which immobile eggs and motile spermatozoa mature. Spermatozoa move through the water to the eggs and fertilize them. Then a box with spores grows on the plant, which, after maturation, crumble and spread over long distances.

Mosses prefer wet places, but they grow in deserts, and on rocks, and in tundra, but they are not found in the seas and on highly saline soils, in loose sands and glaciers.

Significance for humans: peat is widely used as a fuel and fertilizer, as well as for the production of wax, paraffin, paints, paper, and is used in construction as a heat-insulating material.

Divisions "lycosform", "horsetail" and "fern"

These three divisions of spore plants have a similar structure and reproduction, most of them grow in shady and humid places. Woody forms of these plants are very rare.

Ferns, club mosses and horsetails are ancient plants. 350 million years ago, they were large trees, it was they who made up the forests on the planet, in addition, they are the sources of coal deposits at the present time.

A few species of plants of the fern-like, horsetail and lycopsform divisions that have reached today can be called living fossils.

Externally different types club mosses, horsetails and ferns are different from each other. But they are similar in internal structure and reproduction. They are more complex than bryophytes (they have more tissues in their structure), but simpler than seed plants. They belong to spore plants, since they all form spores. They can also reproduce both sexually and asexually.

The most ancient representatives of these groups are club mosses. Today, in coniferous forests, you can find club-shaped club moss.

Horsetails are found in the Northern Hemisphere, now they are represented only by herbs. Horsetails can be found in forests, swamps and meadows. The representative of horsetails is field horsetail, which usually grows on acidic soils.

Ferns are a fairly large group (about 12 thousand species). Among them there are both herbs and trees. They grow almost everywhere. Representatives of ferns are the ostrich and the common bracken.

Significance for humans: the ancient ferns gave us deposits of coal, which is used as fuel and valuable chemical raw materials; some species are used for food, used in medicine, used as fertilizers.

Department "angiosperms" (or "flowering")

Flowering plants are the most numerous and highly organized group of plants. There are more than 300 thousand species. This group makes up the bulk of the planet's vegetation cover. Almost all representatives of the plant world that surround us in ordinary life, both wild and garden plants, are representatives of angiosperms. Among them you can find all life forms: trees, shrubs and grasses.

The main difference between angiosperms is that their seeds are covered with a fruit formed from the ovary of the pistil. The fruit is the protection of the seed and promotes their spread. Angiosperms form flowers - the organ of sexual reproduction. They are characterized by double fertilization.

Flowering plants dominate the vegetation cover as the most adapted to the modern conditions of life on our planet.

Value for the person: are used in food; release oxygen into the environment; are used as building materials, fuel; are used in the medical, food, perfume industries.

Department "gymnosperms"

Gymnosperms are represented by trees and shrubs. There are no herbs among them. Most gymnosperms have leaves in the form of needles (needles). Among the gymnosperms, a large group of conifers stands out.

About 150 million years ago, coniferous plants dominated the vegetation cover of the planet.

Meaning for a person: form coniferous forests; release large amounts of oxygen used as fuel, building materials, shipbuilding, furniture manufacturing; are applied in medicine, in the food industry.

Diversity of the plant world, plant names

The above classification has a continuation, the departments are subdivided into classes, classes into orders, then families, then genera, and finally plant species.

The plant kingdom is vast and diverse, so it is customary to use botanical plant names that have a double name. The first word in the name means the genus of plants, and the second - the species. Here is how the taxonomy of the well-known chamomile will look like:

Kingdom: plants.
Department: flower.
Class: dicot.
Order: astrocolor.
Family: aster.
Genus: chamomile.
Type: chamomile.

Classification of plants according to their life forms, description of plants

The plant kingdom is also classified according to life forms, that is, according to the external appearance of the plant organism.

Trees are perennial plants with lignified aerial parts and a pronounced single trunk.
Shrubs are also perennial plants with lignified above-ground parts, but, unlike trees, they do not have a pronounced single trunk, and branching begins at the very ground and several equivalent trunks are formed.
Shrubs are similar to shrubs, but undersized - no higher than 50 cm.
Semishrubs are similar to shrubs, but differ in that only the lower parts of the shoots are lignified, while the upper parts die off.
Lianas are plants with clinging, climbing and climbing stems.
Succulents are perennial plants with leaves or stems that store water.
Herbs are plants with green, succulent and non-woody shoots.

Wild and cultivated plants

Man also had a hand in the diversity of the plant world, and today plants can also be divided into wild and cultivated.

Wild-growing - plants in nature that grow, develop and spread without human help.

Cultivated plants originate from wild plants, but are obtained by selection, hybridization or genetic engineering. These are all garden plants.

Here is what I have:
"Attempts to classify living matter have been made by scientists repeatedly. Among the first attempts, one can recall the works of Aristotle in zoology and Theophrastus in botany. Since the time of Aristotle, people have divided all living organisms into animals and plants, and such a system of the organic world has been around for quite a long time. In 1172, the Arab philosopher Averroes (Ibn-Rushd) translated Aristotle's works into Arabic, his own commentaries have been lost, but the translation itself has come down to us in Latin.
A great contribution was made by the Swiss professor Konrad Gössner (1516-1565). He owns one of the first attempts to classify plants (Enchiridion historiae plantarum, 1541); Gössner divided the vegetable kingdom based on the traits of the flower and the seed; separated class, order, genus and species, thereby outlining the principles of binary nomenclature. By the end of the XVI - beginning of the XVII centuries. a sufficient amount of knowledge was formed, which formed the basis of scientific classification. Attempts to classify life forms were made by many famous physicians of that time - Jerome Fabricius (1537-1619), a student of Paracelsus Severinus (1580-1656), William Harvey (1578-1657), English anatomist Edward Tyson (1649-1708). Entomologists and early microscopists Marcello Malpighi (1628-1694), Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680) and Robert Hook (1635-1702) made their contributions.
The approach taken by the English naturalist John Ray (1627-1705) in classifying plants in his Historia Plantaromum was an important step towards modern taxonomy. Ray rejected the dichotomous division that was used to classify species and types, proposing to systematize them according to the similarities and differences identified in the process of study.
However, THE BEGINNING OF MODERN SCIENTIFIC SYSTEMATICS IS PLACED BY THE SWEDISH DOCTOR AND NATURALIST CARL LINNE (his main work is The System of Nature, 1735). He divided natural world into three kingdoms: mineral, vegetable and animal. The main merit of Linnaeus is that he laid the foundations of modern taxonomy, approved the binary nomenclature, that is, the system of double Latin designations of species, introduced a clear system into the classification of living organisms (class - detachment - genus - species; variety), which, with additions is used in our time. He created convenient system plant world, smashed animal world into six classes (mammals, birds, amphibians, fish, insects, worms), placed man and great apes in one order. For the first time he noted the arbitrariness of artificial systems and pointed out the need to create natural system taking into account the totality of the characteristics of the body. The method of forming a scientific name introduced by Linnaeus for each of the species is still used (the previously used long names, consisting of a large number of words, gave a description of the species, but were not strictly formalized). The use of the Latin name of two words - the name of the genus, then the specific name - made it possible to separate the nomenclature from the taxonomy.
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Even at the dawn of its history, man drew attention to the huge diversity of the plant world. In the process economic activity he sought to recognize and distinguish useful plants (food, medicinal, etc.), as well as harmful, especially poisonous. Very early, a person began to use the grains of many cereals (wheat, millet, barley), which were found during archaeological excavations and date back to 6-5 millennia BC. e.

On the cultivation of food plants and the acquaintance of man with medicinal herbs hieroglyphs and drawings on the tombs of the Egyptian pharaohs (3000 ᴦ. BC) testify. Drawings on ancient Egyptian monuments primarily reflect edible, spinning, medicinal plants. On the use by ancient peoples of plants such as cereals, millet, onion, garlic known from the Greek historian Geradot (484-425 BC). Corn, potatoes, tobacco cultivated by the ancient peoples of Mexico and Peru.

Descriptions of plants first appear in an ancient Chinese work called Shu-King (about 2200 BC). Information is provided on cereals, legumes, cotton, lemon and mulberry trees.

Ancient Greek natural science is reflected in the writings of Aristotle (384-322 BC). He was the greatest naturalist of his time. Aristotle intuitively recognized the relationship of all living things, and he considered plants as part of nature.

The very first classification of plants known to us was the classification of Theophrastus (371-287 BC), a scientist and philosopher of ancient Greece. His real name is Tirtham, and the name Theophrastus - the divine orator - was given to him by his teacher - Aristotle.

Theophrastus based his classification on the ecological principle, distinguishing classification groups on the basis of plant life forms. Theophrastus divides all plants into trees, shrubs, shrubs and herbs, distinguishes the terrestrial flora, highlighting deciduous and evergreen plants in it, and aquatic flora with freshwater and marine plants. Theophrastus linked data on plants with questions of their practical use, laid the foundation for a useful direction in classification.

Theophrastus' system was the first attempt at an ecological approach to plant classification. The influence of Theophrastus' classification can be traced almost to our time.

The utilitarian direction has long been dominant in the study of plants and their classification (Pliny the Elder, Dioscorides, and others). They end the period of descriptive or practical (utilitarian) classifications of plants.

Period from the end of the XVI to the second half of XVIII century is characterized by the appearance of a number of artificial morphological systems, or systems that are built on the basis of any one or more features.

The period of artificial plant classification systems begins with the system of the Italian botanist A. Cesalpino (1519-1603). He based the classification on the principle of the structure of the reproductive organs. The plant world was divided by him into two departments: 1) trees and shrubs, 2) semi-shrubs and herbs. Further, the plants were grouped into 15 classes based on the structure of the fruit and the number of nests and seeds in them, and then groups of a smaller volume were distinguished, taking into account the structure of the flower. A special place in the Cesalpino system was occupied by class 15, where mosses, ferns, horsetails and mushrooms were assigned. Cesalpino's system, imperfect from a modern point of view, was milestone in the development of plant systematics.

The Swiss botanist Kaspar Baugin (1560-1624) distributed plant species according to similarity into 12 classes.

In the classification system, the English botanist Ray (1623-1705 rᴦ.) identifies plant divisions according to the number of cotyledons and subdivides them into monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous. In his system, he takes into account, in addition to seeds and fruits, the shape of a flower.

Ray's contemporary, the French botanist Tournefort (1656-1708) created his system of plants based on the shape of the corolla of a flower. Tournefort subdivides plants into petalless and petaled, and the latter into single-petal and multi-petal. He, like Rei, divides flowers into simple and complex, regular and irregular; retained the old division into trees, shrubs and herbs.

According to the shape of the flower, Tournefort divided flowering plants first into 14 and then into 18 classes.

The role of the reformer of botany was played by the great Swedish scientist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778). He was among those botanists who in the XVIII century. appreciated the doctrine of Camerarius about the field in plants. Linnaeus put this doctrine at the basis of his famous sexual system of plants, which he outlined in the books ʼʼThe System of Natureʼʼ (1735), ʼʼFundamentals of Botanyʼʼ (1736), ʼʼPlant Speciesʼʼ (1753) and others.
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The Linnaean system was also artificial, but nevertheless it compares favorably with the systems of Ray, Tournefort and his other predecessors. K. Linnaeus chose the reproductive organ as the main systematic feature, but not the fruit, as Cesalpino did, but the flower, but not the shape of the flower, like Tournefort, but the structure of the androecium.

The Linnaean system includes 24 classes of plants. In 23 classes, plants with flowers are presented that differ in the number of stamens, their mutual arrangement, the same or different lengths, the distribution of sexes, as well as plants in which the stamens are fused with the column. In class 24, Linnaeus assigned ʼʼflowerlessʼʼ plants, ᴛ.ᴇ. having no flowers.

The great merit of K. Linnaeus before botany is that he first introduced the binary nomenclature of plants: a plant species is called in two words - generic and species. For example: species - white willow - Salix (generic name), alba (specific epithet) L. (Linneus - surname of the author of the name).

The system of K. Linnaeus ends the period of artificial systems in the history of plant taxonomy.

In the second half XVIII century significant changes are outlined in the views of botanists. This was facilitated by the fact that by this time in Europe many plant species were already known, which were collected in the collections of scientific centers. Describing these plants, taxonomists included them in a certain classification. Each plant got its own name. The generative organs - flowers - were studied in more detail. More advanced optical instruments began to be used. Systematists understood that it was extremely important to move to a more advanced system of plant classification.

The creation of a natural classification system is based on the principles of similarity of plants in terms of a set of characteristics. In the natural system, all plants, starting with algae and fungi and ending with higher flowering plants, are arranged in such a sequence that at the end of each family were placed forms transitional to the next. With this placement, relationships between groups of plants were revealed, the proximity between them was determined, as a result, the entire diversity of plants represented a single whole. The authors of various natural plant systems were the French botanist A. Jussier (1748-1836 rᴦ.), the Swiss botanist O. Decandol (1778-1841 rᴦ.), the Austrian botanist S. Endlicher (1805-1849 rᴦ.), the French paleobotanist A. Brongniard (1801-1876) and others.

evolutionary theory C. Darwin made a real revolution in all areas of natural science, in connection with this, systematics could not remain in the old positions. From a static science that studies organisms in their current state, systematics has become a dynamic science, which aims to show the phylogeny, or origin, of modern organisms from simpler ones and their development in a historical aspect. This ends the second period of the history of systematics - the period of natural systems and begins the third - the period of phylogenetic systems.

The basis for the construction of phylogenetic systems of plants is the principles of generality historical development individual plant taxa (divisions, classes, orders, families, genera and species). The most common phylogenetic systems of plants are those of the German botanist A. Engler (1844-1930), the Austrian botanist R. Wettstein (1863-1931), the German botanist G. Gallier (1868-1932), the English botanist D. Hutchinson (born 1884), Dutch botanist A. Pulle (1878-1955), American botanist C. Bassey (1845-1915), Russian and Soviet botanists I.N. Gorozhankina (1848-1904 gᴦ.), N.A. Bush (1869-1941), A.A. Grossheim (1888-1948), B.M. Kozo-Polyansky (1890-1957), N.I. Kuznetsova (1864-1932), A.L. Takhtadzhyan (born in 1910) and others.

Brief history of plant taxonomy - concept and species. Classification and features of the category "A Brief History of Plant Systematics" 2017, 2018.

Dioscorides, who traveled a lot and knew plants from personal observations (lived in the 1st century AD), a Greek by birth and a popular practitioner in Rome, was the author of the essay “On Medicines”, which contained a description of more than 500 plant species and information about their location and distribution. Dioscorides enjoyed authority not only among his contemporaries, but also among botanists of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. However, the work of Dioscorides was not essential for the development of fundamental principles for the classification of plants.

During the first centuries of our era and almost the entire period of the Middle Ages, including the era of the dominance of Arab culture, when botany was enriched with many information, mainly about medicinal plants, the questions of plant classification, as far as we know, were never posed on the basis of a broad generalization. knowledge of the nature of plants, as was done by Theophrastus.

The revival of botany began at the end of the 15th century. The humanists of Italy began to look for plants in the nature around them, which were mentioned by botanists of antiquity. This movement has taken its toll further development in the 16th century and north of the Alps. The invention of printing in Europe (XV century) and the development of the art of wood carving (engraving) contributed to the exchange of information about plants between botanists. Entire collections of images of plants began to appear, the so-called herbalists. All this led to the fact that the number of plant forms, known to science, increased rapidly. In addition, the great journeys of the late XV - early XVI in. brought information about plants that were previously unknown, completely unusual for Europe. Foreign plants, especially useful in one way or another, began to be bred in special gardens, called botanical ones. The most ancient botanical garden was founded in Salerno (Italy) in 1309, the second (by the time of foundation) - in Venice in 1333. They still differed little from the monastery gardens, where the culture of medicinal and fragrant plants was predominantly concentrated. Later, the botanical gardens were faced with the task of studying flora through the culture of native and foreign plants, describing and classifying them. This type of botanical gardens began to appear only in the XVI century. Of these, botanical gardens are known in Italy, founded in Padua (1525) and Pisa (1544).

In Russia, the first pharmaceutical gardens for growing medicinal plants appeared in the first half of the 17th century. AT early XVIII in. their number has greatly increased. The apothecary garden, founded in Moscow in 1706, was at the beginning of the 19th century. (1805) transformed into the Botanical Garden of Moscow University. In 1714, the Pharmaceutical Garden was founded in St. Petersburg; in 1823 it was renamed the Botanical Garden, which is currently part of the largest botanical institution - the Botanical Institute. V.L. Komarov Academy of Sciences of the USSR.

In the middle of the XVI century. the beginning of the compilation of plant collections - herbaria, which contributed to the development of plant systematics, was laid. The initiator of this undertaking is considered Luca Ghini, the first director of the Pisa Botanical Garden, and his students - Aldrovandi and Cesalpino.

Botanical gardens, herbariums and herbalists had great importance and knowledge of plant diversity. In the presence of samples of already known plants, or at least their drawings, it was relatively easy to compare

A very important innovation in plant systematics was binary nomenclature plants, consistently applied in biology by Linnaeus. The essence of binary nomenclature is that each plant is assigned a name consisting of two words, the first of which represents the name of the genus to which the given species belongs, and the second is the so-called species epithet, which along with the generic name serves to designate a species.

Obviously, the use of such a method of naming plants could arise no earlier than the concept of the genus and species of plants was developed in botany.

Already in the middle of the XVI century. natural scientists to a large extent approached the concept of a species as a systematic category. At the beginning of the XVII century. Swiss botanist Kaspar Baugin (Boen, 1560-1624), as a result of forty years of work, carried out a critical description of about 6,000 plants. Possessing exceptional erudition and knowledge of ancient and new languages, K. Baugin eliminated, as far as possible, the confusion in the names of plants resulting from the fact that different names were often assigned to the same plant. An important merit of Baugin was that, having distributed plants according to genera, he subordinated smaller systematic units to the latter. Baugin's generic names of plants consist of one or more words, while the names of categories subordinate to the genus usually consist of several (sometimes up to 20) words; but quite often, especially in small genera, both parts of the names were one-word, and the whole name of the plant thus became two-word (binominal). However, both Baugin and subsequent scientists preferred polynomial, verbose names, since they were directly visible from them. distinctive features plants: the scientific name of a plant was at the same time a short description of it. Historians of natural science note that K. Baugin achieved great art in describing plants in brevity.

K. Linnaeus believed that the differences in genera can be sufficiently identified based on the signs of generative organs. As for species, he understood the scope of this unit in a sense close to the definition of D. Ray, but considered it necessary to separate species from varieties, which his predecessors did not do.

C. Linnaeus initially used polynomial names of plants, however, trying to reduce them to the limit, choosing the most significant from the many differences in the species. However, in the work "Species of Plants", the first edition of which was published in 1753, Linnaeus systematically assigned binary (two-word) names to all species. At the same time, the former verbose names retained the meaning of brief descriptions (diagnoses) of the corresponding species; two-word names, or, according to Linnaeus, "simple names", acquired the character of a name-nickname. The reform of plant nomenclature carried out by Linnaeus turned out to be practically convenient, and over time, two-word plant names came into general use, and they are still used to this day.

With all the advantages, the Linnaean system also had a significant drawback, since individual plants, clearly similar to each other in the structure of the androecium, fell into different classes.

Linnaeus made an attempt to construct a fragment of a natural system, highlighting 67 natural orders, which, however, did not exhaust the entire diversity of plants.

When constructing artificial systems, botanists chose as a basis any one trait or a narrow set of traits (for Linnaeus, some features of the structure of a flower, for Cesalpino, the structure of the fruit and the number of seeds, etc.), and according to gradations or variations of these, plants were divided into groups. In the development of a natural system, the adoption of only one or two a priori features that would serve as the basis of classification was excluded. Plants must be united by their "general similarity", i.e., by similarity in possible more signs. But the difficulties that arose along the way made Linnaeus doubt whether it was even possible to build a complete natural system. Nevertheless, he devoted many years of his activity to the "natural method".

An important stage in the development of the natural system was the work of Bernard Jussier (1697 - 1777) and his nephew Antoine Jussier (1748 - 1838). B. Jussier arranged the plants in the botanical garden in Trianon (Versailles) in a special order. But the only printed reflection of this great job turned out to be a garden catalogue. 30 years later, in 1789, A. Jussier published Plant Genera. The significance of this essay was that it formulated diagnoses ( short descriptions) relatively small groups of plants - orders (the Jussier order corresponds in volume approximately to the family of modern taxonomy). This was a significant step forward compared with Linnaeus, who did not give a description of the 67 orders he singled out; in addition, the number of orders in the classification of A. Jussier increased to 100, i.e., 1.5 times. It was possible to formulate diagnoses of orders only on the basis of a deep study of the smaller units included in each of them. A. Jussier did and

The living conditions of plants are subject in their distribution over the earth's surface to a certain regularity; they are geographical. It follows from this that a species can live only on that limited part of the earth's surface, where there are conditions necessary for its existence. The area occupied by a species is called range. Determining belonging this plant to one species or another, the botanist relies 1) on the similarity in all essential features, 2) on the similarity of environmental conditions, and 3) on the common range.

The features, the similarity of which is taken into account when classifying a given plant to a particular species, are not the same in different groups of plants. For example, in the taxonomy of flowering plants, preference is given to external morphological features of the structure, which, to one degree or another, are correlated with both anatomical and biological species features. But in other groups, such as bacteria, external morphological features do not play a decisive role, since diversity

external form in this case is very large, and with the same appearance, bacteria can manifest themselves as essentially different organisms. Here, not the signs of the structure, but their biological and biochemical features. The same applies to a certain extent to certain groups of fungi.

Often, species are subdivided into smaller categories. The most important of them are the following:

Subspecies (subspecies). They are less sharply demarcated from each other than species, and often there are transitional forms between subspecies, but each subspecies has its own distribution area isolated from other subspecies of the same species or only partially coinciding with them, its own range.

Varieties or variations (varietas). Even less sharply differ from each other. In addition, they do not have their own isolated area.

Both subspecies and varieties have distinctive features that are completely hereditarily fixed. But often there are collections of individuals of a species, which, although they differ morphologically from others, but the signs of their difference have not yet become permanent and therefore easily change when changing living conditions. Such groups of individuals are called forms or morphs. (forma, morpha).

As small systematic subdivisions of the species, there are also special forms and biotypes.

In crop production, the concept variety is widely used, which in animal husbandry corresponds to the term breed. A variety is a group of individuals within a botanical species, subspecies or variety of a cultivated plant, which differs in some small but hereditary more or less constant characters from other individuals of the same species, subspecies or variety. Along with morphological differences or characteristics of a variety, the main role is played by those of its properties that determine its economic value.

Morphological characteristics of a variety, especially important for cereals, are the color of grains, awn or awnlessness, the degree of pubescence or its absence, etc. The size, shape and color of fruits characterize varieties in fruit trees and berry bushes; the size, shape, color of the productive organs are the basis for the difference between varieties of tuber and root crops. The color and size of flowers, doubleness, tall or short stature, etc. are used as varietal characteristics of ornamental plants.

The physiological, biochemical and economic characteristics of the variety determined by them are considered to be different degrees of yield, cold resistance, drought resistance, sugar content, starch content, disease resistance, early or late ripening, taste, keeping quality, suitability for transportation, etc.

AT agriculture varieties are exclusively importance. For culture in different areas, different, so-called zoned varieties.

Closely related species that have a common ancestor are combined into larger systematic categories - genera (genus). The latter, according to the same principle of common origin, are combined into families (family), families are in order (ordo), orders - into classes (classis). Finally, classes on the same basis of common origin are combined into departments (divisio). Each of these systematic or taxonomic units can be subdivided, for ease of review, into more

small, denoted by the same words with the prefix "under" ("sub") - subdivision (subdivisio), subclass (subclasses), suborder (subordo) etc. In addition, in families and subfamilies, more tribes are distinguished (tribus), and in childbirth and under childbirth - sections (section).

Allocated in modern systems The divisions of the plant world are a reflection of a very important result of almost a century of development of phylogenetic systematics, the essence of which is that the historical development of the plant world was carried out in the form of not a single progressive evolutionary series that became more complicated, but in the form of several more or less parallel evolutionary series.

The independence of individual evolutionary trunks, i.e., their genetic independence from each other, provides one of the essential grounds for distinguishing the largest classification units - departments.

However, not every trunk of evolution is considered as one department. In the phylogenesis of some trunks, periods of sharp breaks could take place, determined by profound changes in the entire organization of plants in connection with adaptation to a new environment of existence, unusual for the more ancient representatives of this trunk. So, for example, it is believed that one of the divisions of algae, evolving, once gave rise to leafy plants that adapted to life on land. Specific forms of plants, which marked the onset of this turning point in evolution, together with their descendants, who increasingly mastered the land environment, also deserve to be singled out in a separate section. Such profound changes in the organization, generally speaking, of each evolutionary trunk can be repeated. As a rule, the specific group of organisms that gave rise to this or that department remains unknown, and thus this largest unit of classification is isolated from others in the system.

Under the name of a department in modern taxonomy, therefore, either trunks of evolution completely isolated from others with all their ramifications, or parts (segments) of these trunks corresponding to long stages of historical development and delimited from the previous and subsequent stages by a radical change in organization in connection with adaptation to life in new specific conditions of existence.

The classification of the entire plant world in this guide is based on the classification of A. Engler in its latest (1954) edition with the following deviations. Extensive department Chrysophyta divided into three: Chrysophyta in the narrow sense Xanthophyta(or Heterocontae) and Bacillariophyta(or diatomae). Department Glaucophyta, whose independence continues to be hypothetical, is excluded. As such, the system comprises 18 departments, which the following table (p. 16) may serve as an overview of.

Attention has been repeatedly drawn to the fact that pyrrhophytes, golden, yellow-green, diatoms and brown algae are distinguished from others by a non-green color associated with the predominance of xanthophylls over chlorophyll a, chlorophyll b they lack. This gives reason to some botanists to combine the named departments (in the rank of classes) into one department. Chromophyta, and for each of the combined groups to keep the value independent of other lines of evolutionary development. Combining them

into one division, therefore, only reflects the assumption of the possible origin of all (or almost all) of the named algae from a common hypothetical ancestor. But, on the other hand, the originality of even brown, diatoms and golden algae is so great that from a classification point of view it is more expedient to consider them as separate divisions. This applies even more to pyrrhophytic and yellow-green algae.

The development of plant taxonomy as a science began in the 18th century. with the direct and active participation of our domestic scientists. The contribution of our domestic science to the construction of the plant world system is quite large.

The construction of a phylogenetic system requires its elaboration at all levels, beginning with the basic unit, the species, and ending with the largest subdivisions. Over 17,500 species grow on the vast territory of the Soviet Union, belonging to 160 families of vascular plants alone, that is, ferns, horsetails, lycopsids, angiosperms and angiosperms. Many of them are common with plants of border and more distant countries, but many are limited in their distribution only to our territory. Revealing species diversity of our flora is the work of domestic scientists. Already in the XVIII century. along with foreign scientists whom the tsarist government invited to work in Russia, Mycophyta (Fungi, mushrooms)

Lichenophyta (lichens)

talented researchers from the Russian people stood out, who began the accumulation of floristic material. One of the first Russian botanists was S. P. Krasheninnikov (1713-1755). Starting from the first half

18th century the number of botanical florists steadily increased, as their scientific output increased. In the middle of the XIX century. on the basis of the material accumulated by that time, it was possible to publish a consolidated floristic work carried out by Professor of Yuriev University K. F. Ledebour, - "Flora, Rossica". This four-volume work, which combines descriptions of more than 6,500 plant species, made an era in the study of our flora, as a summary containing not only a list of species and their characteristics, but also a summary of all literary data on the flora of Russia. "Flora Rossica" greatly facilitated the further study of the plant world of our country, and to this day it is one of the important reference sources for systematic botanists.

The accumulation of floristic material was carried out in a number of large scientific centers: at all universities, at the Academy of Sciences, at the St. Petersburg Botanical Garden and other botanical institutions. Already towards the end

19th century Flora Ledebour needed major replenishment due to the accumulation of a mass of new data and in connection with the accession to Russia of the Central Asian territories, the plants of which were not included in "Flora Rossica". The number of plants known to grow in Russia had increased greatly, and a new summary was required. However, this work was not within the power of one person. The collective processing of the domestic flora was organized only after the Great October Socialist Revolution, when the compilation of an extensive consolidated work on flowering, gymnosperms and ferns was begun by a large team of botanists, headed by Academician V.L. Komarov. The first volume of "Flora of the USSR" was published in 1934. The publication was completed in 1964.

"Flora of the USSR" is needed primarily for practical purposes. A wide variety of institutions and enterprises dealing with vegetable raw materials, need a summary floristic composition.

In connection with the identification of the species composition of the flora, domestic researchers participated in the development of the concept of species and methods of species taxonomy. The theoretical generalizations of S. I. Korzhinsky (1861-1900), who substantiated the concept of race, received important general scientific significance. Korzhinsky attributed to one race all forms "which, in the presence of known morphological differences, represent an area of distribution." The concept of race as a geographical phenomenon formed the basis of the morphological-geographic method of taxonomy, which Korzhinsky was the first to use and which is currently used in all floristic monographs and solid reviews. higher plants. Korzhinsky developed and substantiated this method earlier than Wettstein, who is usually credited with priority in this respect in foreign literature. Academician V.L. Komarov, who enriched science with the monograph "The Doctrine of Species in Plants", in which he critically analyzed the concept of species and formulated its definition based on the theory of Charles Darwin and the main provisions of dialectical materialism.

B. A. Keller (1874-1945), developing the idea of the morphological-geographical method, came up with a substantiation of the ecological-morphological method, which he used in systematic research, purposefully aimed at studying the evolution of plants.

Work on the study of the domestic flora, both higher and, in part, lower plants entailed the need for a critical revision of the descriptions of species, their volume and their position in the system. As a result, such

critical revisions often resulted in monographic treatments of entire genera. In monographs, on the basis of broad generalizations, family ties were established between parts of the genus (sections) and individual groups of species. In this way, individual links of the phylogenetic system were elucidated. The fruits of monographic processing carried out by Russian scientists (for example, N.I. Kuznetsov, V.L. Komarov, A.A. Bunge, A.A. Elenkin and many others), entered the general fund of world plant systematics.

The construction of the plant system as a whole and the development of its principles have always aroused the liveliest interest and active response from Russian scientists. Already at the beginning of the XIX century. essays were published on criticism of the then dominant system of Linnaeus (T.A. Smelovsky, 1808). Later M.A. Maksimovich delivered a dissertation "On the systems of the plant kingdom", in which, characterizing the content of the natural system and its differences from artificial ones, he establishes a difference between the concepts of affinity and similarity between plants, evaluates A. Jussier's system as more artificial than natural, objects to the linear the arrangement of plants in the system and against the idea of the world of plants as a set of links arranged in order of increasing perfection of the structure. Some Russian scientists acted as the authors of their systems of flowering and other large groups of plants, as well as of the entire plant world: N.I. Kuznetsov (1864-1932), N.A. Bush (1869-1941), A.A. Grossheim (1888 - 1948), A.L. Takhtajyan, X.Ya. Gobi (1847 — 1919), B.M. Kozo-Polyansky (1890 — 1957).

Numerous studies by Russian scientists in the field of evolutionary morphology were extremely important. Many of the advances in this regard have had a profound effect on the development of plant phylogenetic systematics. These works include the studies of I.N. Gorozhankin (1848-1904) on the ontogeny of some green algae (Volvoxaceae) and on the fertilization of gymnosperms. I. N. Gorozhankin proposed a thoughtful and deeply substantiated division of the entire plant world into three large sections: oogonial, archegonial and pistillate (flowering) plants. The last two are still accepted by some taxonomists.

Works by V.I. Belyaev (1855-1911) on the study of the development of male growths of heterosporous fern-like and gymnosperms introduced a lot of new things into the theory of the phylogenetic relationship between myogamous and phanerogamous plants. They gave impetus to the study of microspores of lower gymnosperms and led to the discovery of spermatozoa in cycads and ginkgoes, which finally established links between gymnosperms and ferns.

S.G. Navashin (1857 - 1930). He owns the discovery of double fertilization (1898) - original feature angiosperms, - a discovery that, together with subsequent works, brought S.G. Navashin the reputation of a world-famous scientist.

The construction of the phylogenetic system of plants in our country was carried out on the basis of a critical perception of the ideas of the evolutionary teachings of Charles Darwin. Along with such major botanists as A.N. Beketov, P.F. Goryaninov, K.A. Timiryazev, V.L. Komarov, B.M. Kozo-Polyansky and many others, in this respect Russian zoologists also played an important role. Proceedings IN. Kovalevsky, A.O. Kovalevsky, M.A. Menzbira, N.A. Severtsova, A.N. Severtsova, I.I. Mechnikov and many others not only contributed to the dissemination of the ideas of evolutionary teaching among us, but also introduced a lot of fundamentally new things into the theory of Charles Darwin, that is, they developed Darwinism as a general biological science.

The following botanical works of Theophrastus have been preserved: Causes of Plants in 6 books and Studies on Plants in 9 books. Cm.: Theophrastus Phycophyta" ("algal plants"), in which case the types of algae should be called Chrysophycophyta, Chlorophycophyta, Phaeophycophyta etc.

It is interesting to compare this figure with the number of species given by Linnaeus in his "Species plantarum", for Russia - 350. The total number of species of flora of the Earth Linnaeus, estimating 8 - 10 thousand.