Taxonomy have fascinated me for many years, but I have found it frustrating, classes came and disappeared, the ending on orders changes, families change names, and it seems like every source had it's system. While digging down deeper in the history of taxonomy, I realized there were many parallel systems, and most borrowed form earlier systems. Some came up with radical changes, other just changes a few orders in an existing system. What puzzles me is; not a single plant stands without author, but no one seems to be willing to write which system they are using.
I have not been able to find the full taxon on the early systems, but most systems from 1900 and till today is present in details, down to families.             
                                                                               Bihrmann, 2007.
                                         The information on this page is gathered from around 90 sources, no list.

                2650 BC-1542    1583-1690 >
In the beginning, there were not really systems, but just lists of medical plants. In some cases divided into; tree, shrub and herb. Never the less, I have included the first authors.
 

Theophrastus was born on the Greek island Lesbos. He was a student of Plato and Aristotle. He presided over the Peripatetic school for 35 years, and dealt with many scientific subjects.

Some of his names live today: Daucus, Asparagus, and Narcissus.

Pedanius Dioscorides was born in Anazarbus, Greece (Nazarba, Turkey) - part of the Roman Empire. He had access to the library at Alexandria, and may have studied at Tarsus. He became a leading physician, pharmacologist and botanist, and his work on medical plants was a keystone to a medical carrier for 1½ millennium.

The genus Dioscorea is named in his honor.
 

Ãbu Hanìfar Ãhmad ibn Dawùd Dìnawarì / Al-Dinawri was born in Dìnawar (modern days western Iran). He studied astronomy, mathematics and mechanics in Isfahan and poetry and philology in Kufa and Basra. Beside from that, he had an interest in  agriculture, botany and metallurgy.

His work; Kitab Al-Nabat; Book of Plants is his main  contribution.

Albertus Magnus was born in Lauingen an der Donau, Germany. He became a Dominican friar who achieved fame for his comprehensive knowledge and advocacy for the peaceful coexistence of science and religion. He applied the Aristotle's philosophy to Christian thoughts. In 1260, he became Bishop of Regensburg,

He was made a Saint in 1931 and, in 1941, made patron of natural scientists.

1532-37

Otto Brunfels (1488-1534) published his Herbarum vivae icones,1530 and 1536 and Contrafayt Kräuterbuch, 1532-1537. They contain new and good descriptions of the German plants he found during his botanical studies, under their German vernacular names.

Otto Brunfels (also known as Brunsfels or Braunfels) was born in Bern, Switzerland. He studied theology and philosophy in Mainz, and became a minister at Steinau an der Straße in 1521 and later, in Neuenburg am Rhein.
His main interest were the history of evangelical Church, but he also published books on pedagogic, Arabic language and pharmaceutics. Due to the interest in healing plants, he took botany up. He study medicine at the University of Basel, got his M.D. in 1530, and became the City physician in Bern two years later. The special about his publications on botany is; he describes the plants he see, instead of using previous descriptions.
 

Jérôme (Hieronymus) Bock or Tragus (1498-1554) published the first edition of his Kreuterbuch in 1539 un-illustrated.  In 1546, it was illustrated by the artist David Kandel. In those books, he arranging plants by their relation or resemblance. He made a system to classify 700 plants by characteristics, and medical uses.

Jérôme Tragus, was a German botanist, physician, and Lutheran priest who began the transition from medieval botany to the modern scientific worldview by arranging plants by their relation or resemblance.

He have to plants named after: The grass genus Tragus and spurge genus Tragia.

Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566), who is known for his De historia stirpium commentarii insignes 1542 or "New Kreüterbuch". Here, Fuchs tried to identify the plants described by the classical authors. The book contains the description of about 400 German and more than 100 domesticated plant species, but there are no system. It was the way he described the plants, that made him one "of the fathers".

Leonhart Fuchs was a German physician, born in Wemding in the Duchy of Bavaria. After marine school, he became Magister Artium in Ingolstadt, and received his M. D. in 1524.

The plant Fuchsia is named after him.

                2650 BC-1542    1583-1690 >