Helping Pupils to Understand Botanical Names of Plants

Subject: Agricultural Science
Topic: Plants and their Botanical names
Period: Single
Time: 45 Minute
Date: May 13, 2020

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Behavioural Objectives:
At the end of the lesson, the learners should learn why plants species have common names and scientific names.

Instructional Materials:
Plant books, encyclopedias and some simple plants found in our environment.

Introduction

Presentation

Step 1: Introduction
The giving of scientific names to plants started from the early scientists who were confuse because so many plants (and animals) had different names and people in different places, or people who spoke different languages, referred to the same plants and animals by different common names. Source This system helps to differentiate them which provides two names for a species -- a family name (generic name or genus name) and a personal name (specific name).

An example is using each member of our family who has a first name (personal name) that differentiate each individual of the family and a last name (surname) that identifies the family of that person or where the person is coming from (background).

Below, we will see that two different plants have the same last name and different first names but does not work for all common names.

Step 2: Plants and their Botanical names

Product	Common Name	Botanical Name	Family Name
Grains	Maize	Zea mays	Gramineae
	Rice	Oryza sativa
	Wheat	Triticum aestivum
	Guinea corn	Sorghum vulgare
Legumes/Pulses	Groundnut	Arachis hypogaea	Leguminoceae
	Cowpea	Vigna sinensis
	Soybean	Glycine max
	Pigeon pea	Cajanus cajan
Tubers	White yam	Dioscorea rotundata	Dioscoreaceae
	Yellow yam	Dioscorea cayenensis
	Cassava	Manihot utilissima	Euphorbiaceae
	Cocoyam	Colocacia esculenta	Araceae
	Sweet potato	Ipomea batatas	Convolvulaceae
Fruits/Orchard	Banana	Musa sapientum	Musaceae
	Plantain	Musa paradisiaca
	Grapefruit	Citrus paradisi	Rutaceae
	Sweet orange	Citrus sinensis
	Pineapple	Ananas comosus/sativa	Bromoliaceae
	Pawpaw	Carica papaya	Caricaceae
Fruit vegetables	Tomato	Lycopersicon esculentum	Solanaceae
	Hot pepper	Capsicum frutescens
	Sweet pepper	Capsicum annum
	Okro	Hibiscus esculentus	Malvaceae
Drug	Tobacco	Nicotiana tabacum	Solanaceae
Leaf vegetables	African spinach	Amaranthus caudatus	Amaranthaceae
	Carrot	Daucus carota	Umbelliferae
	Fluted pumpkin	Telfeiria spp.	Cucurbitaceae
	Mint	Ocimum Americanum Menta spp.	Labiatae
Fibre	Cotton	Gossypium hirsutum	Malvaceae
Oil	Castor oil	Ricinus communis	Euphorbiaceae
	Coconut	Cocos nucifera	Palmae
	Oil palm	Elaeis guineensis
Wine Latex	Raphia palm	Raphia vinifera	Palmae
	Date palm	Phoenix dactylifera
	Rubber	Hevea brasiliensis	Euphorbiaceae
	Mango	Mangifera	Anacardiaceae
	Cashew	Anacardium occidentale
Fruit	Cocoa	Theobroma cacao	Sterculiaceae
	Kola	Kola acuminata/nitida
	Bread fruit	Artocarpus spp.	Moraceae
	Africa star apple	Chrysophyllum	Sapotaceae
	African pear	Dacryodes edulis	Burseraceae
	Oil bean	Pentaclethra macrophylla	Leguminosae

Evaluation:
To ascertain the learners level of understanding, the teacher will ask them to get a chart and different plants pairing them with their common names and botanical names.