The Naming of Names

The Search for Order in the World of Plants
by Anna Pavord

Anna Pavord's skills as a writer make her book a compelling account of what could have seemed like a dry and esoteric subject: the history of plant taxonomy, the very key to the science of botany. The many beautiful illustrations that accompany the text make the book almost a crash course in the early history of botanical art as well.

The Naming of Names traces the search for order in the natural world, a search that for hundreds of years occupied some of the most brilliant minds in Europe, reaching its apex during the Renaissance. Anna Pavord takes us on a thrilling adventure into botanical history, traveling from Athens in the third century BC, through Constantinople, Venice, and the medical school at Salerno to the universities of Pisa and Padua. The journey, traced here for the first time, involves the culture of Islam, the first expeditions to the Indies, and the first settlers in the New World. Pavord shows how gradually, over a long period in Europe, plants assumed identities and acquired the two-part names that show how they are related to other plants.

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