Taxonomy of cultivated plants

Okay kiddo, imagine that you have a big garden full of many different plants with different colors, shapes and sizes.

Now, imagine that you need a way to keep track of and remember all the different types of plants you have in your garden. That's what taxonomy is! It's a way to organize and group plants based on their important characteristics, like their leaves, flowers, or how they grow.

Each plant gets a scientific name that is made up two parts - the genus name and the species name. Think of like a first name and a last name for the plant. For example, the tomato plant's scientific name is Solanum lycopersicum. Solanum is the genus name and lycopersicum is the species name.

Scientists use these names to identify and classify plants all over the world. When you go to a grocery store and pick up a tomato, you know it's a tomato because it has the same scientific name as the tomato plants growing in your garden.

So, by using taxonomy, we can keep track of all the different types of plants we grow and understand how they are related to each other. It helps us to understand plants better and make better decisions when growing them. Pretty cool, right?