Introduction

Plants have been the constant companions of human life, supplying food, energy, shelter, clothing, drugs, beverages, oxygen, and enriching our aesthetic surroundings. The taxonomic instinct in people isn't limited to classifying living things either - humans learn early to identify, describe, name and sort food, clothes, books, games, vehicles and everything else they encounter, making every person, in a sense, a taxonomist from birth to death.

Taxonomy itself has passed through several distinct phases on its way to its modern form. The need to understand plants goes back to the very start of human existence, as people began relying on plants for food, shelter and as remedies for illness. Theophrastus (372-287 BC), the Greek philosopher remembered as the 'Father of Botany', named and described around 500 plants in his 'De Historia Plantarum'. Later, the Greek physician Dioscorides (62-127 AD) described roughly 600 medicinal plants in his celebrated 'Materia Medica'. From the 16th century onward, Europe saw major advances in taxonomy through contributors such as Andrea Caesalpino, John Ray, Tournefort, and the brothers Jean and Gaspard Bauhin, and Linnaeus's 'Species Plantarum' (1753) laid the foundation for binomial nomenclature as we use it today.

Taxonomy is no longer a purely morphology-based discipline - it has grown into a dynamic, transdisciplinary field drawing on cell biology, physiology, biochemistry, ecology, pharmacology, and increasingly modern biotechnology, molecular biology and bioinformatics, helping researchers understand biodiversity, manage wildlife and forest resources sustainably, and support ecological restoration.