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Terminology

• ACCESSION: one specimen of a species, with a given locality. In principle accessions can be living or dead.
• CLONO-TYPE: specimens of a species of which part is used for the type description, see also 'type'.
• FAMILY: A group containing mostly several genera with common characteristics, e.g. 'Gentianaceae', a family containing 1200 species, divided in 74 genera. Several genera in this family contain well known ornamental plants, for instance Gentiana [garden plants], Exacum [indoor plants], and Lysianthus [cut flowers].
• FYLOGENETIC: classification based on molecular characteristics. See also: Taxonomy.
• GENUS: for instance 'Gentiana'. The genus name is the first epithet to indicate a given plant species, for instance Gentiana acaulis.
• SYSTEMATICS: see 'taxonomy'
• TAXON [plural: TAXA]: indication for a group of organisms, being either on the level of a species, a genus, a family, or even on a higher level of hierarchy. The word taxon [group] is mostly used in science in the sense of a group not strictly on one hierarchical level.
• TAXONOMY: scientific discipline in which species are classified based on common characteristics into genera, the genera into families, and families into even larger groups. Historically, this classification was based primarily on morphological characteristics, in recent years molecular systematics play an important role. A synonym for taxonomy is systematics.
• TYPE: for each given plant name there is a specific [herbarium] specimen representing the view of the author who named the species.