Artificial system of classification

Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778), the Swedish botanist known as the 'Father of Taxonomy', outlined an artificial classification - his 'sexual system' - in Species Plantarum (1753), where he listed and described 7,300 species, sorted into 24 classes almost entirely by the number, union (adhesion/cohesion), length and distribution of the flower's STAMENS (e.g. Class 1 Monandria = one stamen; Class 10 Decandria = ten stamens; Class 21 Monoecia = monoecious plants; Class 24 Cryptogamia = flowerless plants). The classes were further split into orders based on carpel characters.

Despite being artificial, this system persisted for over 100 years after Linnaeus's death purely because it was simple and made plants easy to identify quickly. But it ultimately failed as a REAL classification for two reasons. First, totally unrelated plants were lumped into a single group while closely related plants were scattered across widely separated groups - e.g. Zingiberaceae (a monocot family) and Anacardiaceae (a dicot family) were both placed under Monandria purely because both happen to have a single stamen, and Prunus was classified alongside Cactus purely because they share the same stamen count. Second, …