My name is Emily and I grew up in Fairbanks. My family and I enjoy identifying plants on our hikes throughout Interior Alaska. Some of my favorite flowers are yarrow, wild roses, and twinflowers. I also greatly enjoy our annual blueberry and cranberry picking expeditions. I look forward to learning more about plants which are native to Alaska.
Welcome Emily,
nice to hear about your favorite plants. I love twinflower. It is a curious on several levels, it was described my a student of Carl Linnaeus, the father of botanical nomenclature who came up with the binomial system (genus and species system of naming organism). The twinflower was named in honor of Linnaeus by one of his own mentors from the Netherlands, Jan Frederik Gronovius. But it was Linnaeus who picked up this name in his Species Plantarum (1753) and as such Linnaeus is used as the authority of the scientific name Linnaea borealis L. The L. stands for Linnaeus as the author of the scientific name of the twinflower. Linnaeus in the Species Plantarum provided 5,940 names and formalized these names in the binomial system, and his book contained descriptions of these thousands of plant species known to Linnaeus at the time. Just a little insight into the history of the naming of this woodland beauty.