Once upon a time in a land where most of the population worked the land, farm animals slept indoors (sometimes even in the communal family bed), and the average life expectancy was 40, Latin was the language used by educated (or, as they said then, learned) men and priests—hence the official means of communication between countries. Throughout the middle ages and up until the early 1600s, in order to gain admittance to a university one had to speak and write Latin. The connection between Latin and higher education has continued to this day, ensuring that future generations of prep school graduates know that semper ubi sub-ubi means always wear underwear...

While it's been said that Latin is a "dead language," any reports of its death are greatly exaggerated. Not only does Latin serve as the basis for the Romance languages—French, Spanish, Italian, Romanian, and Portuguese—but many familiar phrases are undiluted, straight-up, old-school Latin. Some such terms are: alter ego; bona fide; persona non grata; ad nauseam; carpe diem; alma mater; pro bono; curriculum vitae; vice versa; terra firma; quid pro quo; mea culpa; per diem; and et cetera. And let's not overlook the ubiquitous e.g.—exempli gratia, meaning "for the sake of example"—and its oft confused cousin i.e. (Latin for id est, meaning that is). These examplis are proof that Latin is alive and, well, well-used, in today's vernacular.

But beyond the Latin words and phrases that live on and pepper our conversations in A.D. 2005 (anno Domini—yes, more Latin), in the scientific world Latin is the foremost identifier of flora and fauna. Why Latin when, centuries ago, French replaced Latin as the linguage du jour (interestingly enough, this was referred to as the "lingua franca," or common language, at the time) and, since then, English has become the Unix system of languages? By using the universal language of scholars, scientific researchers could be sure that if they identified a Larus argentatus in Prague, a colleague in Helsinki would know that they saw a Herring Gull.

The convention of using a binomial, or two-word, naming system was established in 1753, when Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish physicist and naturalist, published Species Plantarus (plant species). It worked (and still works) like this: the first identifier is the genus (a group of related species)—e.g. Rosa is a rose—and the second moniker identifies the specific species within that group of species. Hence, a rose by another name could be a Rosa centifolia (cabbage rose) or a Rosa damascena (damask rose), or a Rosa rugosa (Japanese rose).

For the purposes of these articles, all species are identified with their English name, followed by the Latin genus and species name, in italic. When the species is mentioned a second time, just the English name is given. So, don't say "It's all Greek to me!," because it's more likely Latin...

*Anything said in Latin sounds profound