Stone, Doris M.
Doris M. Stone: Director of Education at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden

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The focus of ecology is not on the individual plant or animal; it is one the populations within a given community. The Lives of Plants, 1983.

The ecologist seeks answers to questions such as these: How do populations interact with one another and with the abiotic environment? What causes fluctuations in their numbers? How does energy flow through the system? What is the impact of man and his activities upon the community? Ibid.

Historically, a species has been defined as a group of plants (or animals) that have many characteristics in common and that breed freely among themselves, being either completely or relatively infertile with other similar species. A species therefore maintains its identity, at least over a couple of centuries. Ibid.

The star on the taxonomic firmament in the eighteenth century was the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus. With glittering success, in his Systema Naturae of 1735 he reduced the vast assemblage of flowering plants to one orderly classification. Ibid.