Many classification systems suffered inaccuracies when copied 

and little in the way of new ideas during the so-called Dark Ages

•

As the Dark Ages ended, people looked anew at classification, 
now with an eye to similarity as an indication of relationship 
and thus position in the system

•

One of the early popular ways of doing “natural” systems was 
counting number of flower parts, which is still done today

•

As time went on, people more and more looked at all the 
obvious, morphological features to produce their version of a 
system

•

Some weighted certain characters over others, again a 
practice that sometimes (often unconsciouly) is done today

•

During this period, Carl Linnaeus invented a way of naming 
the plants in the systems, more about that later