3 - Plant Taxonomy

Summary

An understanding of taxonomy is fundamental to effective conservation planning and implementation. Associated knowledge is used in the selection of species for conservation, understanding inter-taxon relationships and field identification. At its heart is the elucidation of relationships between taxa (families, genera, species or subspecific taxa) and the production of classifications that reflect their evolutionary relationships. The relationships are summarized in the classification, based commonly on analysis of molecular and / or morphological characters, and the included taxa are placed in a taxonomic hierarchy with decreasing relatedness or similarity between the ranks as you go up the hierarchy. Once the classification is established a series of other products can be derived for the included taxa such as descriptions, synonyms, distribution maps, identification aids and accepted nomenclature.