Actaea Racemosa - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

The plant species has a history of taxonomic uncertainty dating back to Carl Linnaeus, who — on the basis of morphological characteristics of the inflorescence and seeds — had placed the species into the genus Actaea. This designation was later revised by Thomas Nuttall reclassifying the species to the genus Cimicifuga. Nuttall's classification was based solely on the dry follicles produced by black cohosh, which are typical of species in Cimicifuga. However, recent data from morphological and gene phylogeny analyses demonstrate that black cohosh is more closely related to species of the genus Actaea than to other Cimicifuga species. This has prompted the revision to Actaea racemosa as originally proposed by Linnaeus. Blue cohosh (Caulophyllum thalictroides), despite its similar common name belongs to another family, the Berberidaceae, and is therefore not closely related to black cohosh.