nomenclature
The naming of plants to provide, for every taxon, a single name that is unique, unambiguous and understood all over the world. A fundamental of nomenclature is the Latin (or latinized) binomial specifying genus and species, together with the author of the binomial ie. the surname of the person who first proposed the name, which may be abbreviated. For instance, the full identity of English oak is Quercus robur L., the ‘L’ standing for the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. There are various conventions for taxa within species (infraspecific names) and man-made taxa
This definition is abridged from A – Z of tree terms: A companion to British arboriculture.
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