Genera Plantarum

Genera Plantarum is a publication of Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778). The first edition was issued in Leiden, 1737. The fifth edition served as a complementary volume to Species Plantarum (1753). Article 13 of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants states that "Generic names that appear in Linnaeus' Species Plantarum ed. 1 (1753) and ed. 2 (1762–63) are associated with the first subsequent description given under those names in Linnaeus' Genera Plantarum ed. 5 (1754) and ed. 6 (1764)." This defines the starting point for nomenclature of most groups of plants.

The first edition of Genera Plantarum contains brief descriptions of the 935 plant genera that were known to Linnaeus at that time. It is dedicated to Herman Boerhaave, a Leiden physician who introduced Linnaeus to George Clifford and the medico-botanical Dutch establishment of the day. Genera Plantarum employed his “sexual system” of classification, in which plants are grouped according to the number of stamens and pistils in the flower. Genera Plantarum was revised several times by Linnaeus, the fifth edition being published in August 1754 (eds. 3 and 4 were not edited by Linnaeus) and linked to the first edition of Species Plantarum. Over the 16 years that passed between the publication of the first and fifth editions the number of genera listed had increased from 935 to 1105.

Linnaeus established the system of binomial nomenclature through the widespread acceptance of his list of plants in the 1753 edition of Species Plantarum, which is now taken as the starting point for all botanical nomenclature. Genera Plantarum was an integral part of this first stepping stone towards a universal standardised biological nomenclature.

From 1735 to 1738 Linnaeus worked in the Netherlands where he was personal physician to George Clifford (1685–1760) a wealthy Anglo-Dutch merchant–banker with an impressive garden containing four large glasshouses that were filled with warmth-loving plants from overseas. Linnaeus was enthralled by these collections and prepared a detailed systematic catalogue of the plants in the garden, which he published in 1738 as Hortus Cliffortianus. This list was published with engravings by Georg Ehret (1708–1770) and Jan Wandelaer (1690–1759). Linnaeus included Ehret's Tabella (an illustration of his "Sexual System" of plant classification) in his Genera Plantarum but without credit to the artist. This provoked the accusation from Ehret that "When he was a beginner [Linnaeus] appropriated everything for himself which he heard of, to make himself famous". Nevertheless, Ehret probably met Linnaeus again when the latter visited London for a month. The time in the Netherlands was a productive one for Linnaeus because in these four years he also published Systema Naturae (1735), Bibliotheca Botanica (1736), Fundamenta Botanica (1736), Flora Lapponica (1737) and Critica Botanica (1737), this is in addition to his Genera Plantarum (1737).

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