Descriptive botanical names are names that are governed by Article 16 of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN), which rules that a name above the rank of family may be either descriptive or formed from the name of an included family. The latter leads to names such as Magnoliophyta and Magnoliopsida.
Descriptive plant names are decreasing in importance but many are still in use, such as Plantae, Algae, Musci, Fungi, Embryophyta, Tracheophyta, Spermatophyta, Gymnospermae, Coniferae, Coniferales, Angiospermae, Monocotyledones, Dicotyledones. Such descriptive names have a very long history, often preceding Carl Linnaeus. As Latin was the universal scientific language in those days such names are in good Latin, and usually take the form of nouns in the plural.
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