ABSTRACT
The urge to classify plants has been with man since he first set his foot on this planet, borne of a need to know what he should eat, avoid, use as cures for ailments and utilize for his shelter. Initially, this information was accumulated and stored in the human brain and passed on to generations through word of mouth in dialects restricted to small communities. Slowly, man learned to put his knowledge in black and white for others to share and improve upon. We have now reached a stage whereby a vast amount of information can be conveniently stored and utilized for far-reaching conclusions aimed at developing ideal systems of classification, which depict the putative relationships between organisms. Historical development of classification has passed through four distinct approaches, beginning with simple classifications based on gross morphology to the latest phylogenetic systems incorporating all types of phenetic information.
