1753: Cannabis is given its botanical name

1753: Cannabis is given its botanical name.

Although people have cultivated cannabis throughout recorded history as a source of industrial fiber, seed oil, food, recreation, religious and spiritual enlightenment, and medicine (where each part of the plant is harvested differently, depending on the purpose of its use), it would take until 1753 for hemp to has an official name.

The publication of Linnaeus’s “Species Plantarum” in 1753 is regarded as the starting point for the Latin binomial, or two-word, names of plants. Before his taxonomic system was adopted, there was confusion. It was written by botanist Carl Linnaeus, who decided on Cannabis sativa L. as the botanical name for hemp.

Cannabis sativa is today known as an annual herbaceous plant in the Cannabis genus, a species of the Cannabaceae family.

Photo: Left> Cannabis Sativa drawing published and copyrighted by Gera-Untermhaus, FE Köhler in 1887. Right> Species Plantarum by C. Linnaeus, 1753.

Research and text © Hempshopper Amsterdam.