Heroes who looked, saw and thought

I imagine that most people, if asked who was responsible for the familiar method of classifying plants and animals into families, genera and species, would name the 18th-century Swedish naturalist Linnaeus. It is true that he named more species than anyone else, but in this magisterial book his work is seen as little more than a footnote to that of his predecessors. Linnaeus was a filer and an organiser, who eliminated synonyms, and standardised the binomial system whereby two words — the generic name and the specific epithet — describe every species in the Kingdom of Creation.

Linnaeus’ predecessors were the original thinkers whose story Anna Pavord tells. In doing so, she takes us on a fascinating journey from Aristotle’s Lyceum in Athens to the laboratory at Kew where Professor Mark Chase is currently analysing the DNA of plants.

Theophrastus (c. 372-287 BC) was the first man to try to make sense of the plant world, and the first in Anna Pavord’s pantheon of heroes. He had studied under Plato, and he taught at Aristotle’s school in Athens. Aristotle bequeathed his library to Theophrastus.

Aristotle and Theophrastus were both mocked by their contemporaries. Why waste time and thought on catkins and palm trees when politics, ethics and rhetoric are so much more important? But Theophrastus asked the big questions. What have we got? And how do we differentiate between them? These questions are still being asked today. New species are still being found, and the discovery of DNA means that scientists can go beyond appearances and tell us that, for instance, the lotus is more closely related to plane trees and proteas than to the waterlily, which it superficially resembles.

Theophrastus died at the age of 85. He said at the end of his life, ‘We die just when we are beginning to live.’