Q.A plant may have different names in different regions of the country or world. How do botanists solve this problem?

Imagine trying to talk about one particular plant with someone in another country when each of you knows it only by a different local name — names that change from place to place even within a single country. The conversation quickly becomes confused, because the same organism is being called many different things. Binomial nomenclature is the elegant solution to exactly this problem: it gives every organism one standard scientific name that means the same thing everywhere in the world.

Binomial nomenclature is a system in which every scientific name is made of two parts — the generic name (the genus) and the specific epithet (the species). This two-word system was devised by Carolus Linnaeus and is used by biologists everywhere because it is so convenient. For example, the scientific name of the mango is written as Mangifera indica, where Mangifera is the genus and indica is the specific epithet.

The naming follows a set of universally agreed rules:

• Biological names are generally in Latin and written in italics; whatever their original language, they are treated as Latinised.
• The first word denotes the genus; the second word denotes the specific epithet.
• When handwritten, the two words are underlined separately; in print they appear in italics, showing their Latin origin.
• The genus name begins with a capital letter, while the specific epithet begins with a small letter — as in Mangifera indica.
• The author's name, in abbreviated form, is added at the very end, for instance Mangifera indica Linn., indicating that Linnaeus was the first to describe the species. …