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.