Question

What is the taxonomic classification for sunflowers?

Answer 1

Hint: Sunflower belongs to the kingdom Plantae. The taxonomic hierarchy of sunflower is Kingdom – Plantae, Phylum/ Division – Tracheophyta, Subdivision – Spermatophyta, Class – Magnoliopsida, Order – Asterales, Family – Asteraceae, Genus – Helianthus, Species – annus.

Complete answer:
Taxonomy is the branch of biology dealing with the study of scientific rules, principles, and practice of identification, nomenclature, and classification of an organism.
Taxonomic classification is based on taxonomic hierarchy. Taxonomic hierarchy is the sequence of arrangement of taxonomic ranks in the descending order (i.e., from a higher level to a lower level ). It follows the order: Kingdom--> Division/ Phylum--> Class--> Order--> Family--> Genus--> Species.
Categories :
1. Species: Group of individuals having similar characters and inbreeding among themselves but are reproductively isolated. If we take the example of humans (biological name: Homo sapiens) sapiens is the species.
2. Genus: When a group of species is closely related to each other (different species bearing some similar characters ). Homo is the genus name for a human.
3. Family: Several related genera, more similar to one another. Humans belong to the family: Hominidae.
4. Order: Group of the family but less in number than the number of genera present in a family. Human has order Primata
5. Class: More than one related order constitutes the class. Mammalia for humans.
6. Division / Phylum: Few similar characteristics of the class make a division or phylum. Chordata is a phylum for humans.
7. Kingdom: All the divisions of plants and animals. Humans belong to the Animalia kingdom.

Note. :
The biological name of the sunflower is Helianthus annuus L. Division is used in the case of plant classification and Phylum is used for the animal classification. The taxonomic hierarchy is also known as the Linnaean hierarchy. The taxonomic categories such as species, genus, family, etc. represent a rank while ‘taxon’ represents the group of biological organisms that have been included in a category.