Classical Morphological Taxonomy

Abstract

Before nineteenth century, biological science was restricted by the level of development and technical conditions. The classical taxonomy based on comparative morphology was the leading discipline of the development of biological science. The research method is based on the comparative morphological study of herbarium, with reference to geographical distribution and other collecting records to identify similarities and differences, thus to classify and identify species. Although using this shallow method can also reflect natural system relations to some extent, it is impossible to clarify complex problems between species by this strategy, which inevitably brings many wrong results.