Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't: A No-Nonsense Guide to Teaching Yourself Botany
A passionate botanist offers a practical, no-nonsense guide for self-taught botany, debunking intimidation around Latin terminology and taxonomy. The post recommends key textbooks like Michael Simpson's Plant Systematics and Raven's Biology of Plants, and encourages using online resources like Libgen and Sci-Hub to access knowledge. It emphasizes understanding evolutionary relationships to identify plants, and dismisses performative critiques of taxonomy.
When botanic names (or any organism’s name) is written in scientific nomenclature, the genus name is capitalized and the species name is lower case, and the name itself is usually written in italics.