Lesson 2 of 8 · 10 min
Binomial nomenclature
NCERT §1.1
Meera's grandmother's old gardening book has a label under the mango drawing: 'Mangifera indica Linn.' Why two words, why the tilted letters, and who is Linn.?
The lesson in notes
In short
Every scientific name has two parts: the generic name (the genus) and the specific epithet. Naming with two components is binomial nomenclature, introduced by Carolus Linnaeus and used by biologists all over the world.
In Mangifera indica, the scientific name of mango, Mangifera is the genus and indica is the specific epithet.
Scientific names are in Latin or are Latinised, whatever language the word first came from.
Printed names appear in italics. When written by hand, the two words are underlined separately, not with one continuous line.
The genus begins with a capital letter and the specific epithet begins with a small letter, as in Mangifera indica, never Mangifera Indica.
The name of the author who first described the species may follow the epithet in an abbreviated form, for example Mangifera indica Linn., which shows that Linnaeus first described it.
Other examples used in the chapter: Solanum tuberosum (potato), Panthera leo (lion) and Homo sapiens (human being).
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Writing scientific names with the rules
Bios | Bio Scholar · English · Lecture · Open on YouTube