In my post last week about Strelitzia reginae (the Bird of Paradise plant), I wrote about how it had been initially mistaken as another plant, then later reclassified as a new species. One of the documents I found that supported this fact (and several others) was a collection of Dutch history with an extraordinary long title (the relevant part of …
What’s in a Name
In 2012, The Melbourne Code was published. Though it sounds like Dan Brown’s next novel, it is actually the result of a week long conference of botanists called the International Botanical Congress (the next conference will be in Shenzhen, China in 2017), and it’s the eleventh revision of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN). The ICN is basically a …
Science Thoughts from a Feyn Man
Main photo by Keenan Pepper Richard Feynman is one of my favorite scientists. As a lover of biological topics, I can’t say I understand his field of study AT ALL, but I truly appreciate what he has done for science. His charisma (and ego) has popularized science to a certain generation, and his approach to learning about the world continues to encourage …