Thorne system


A system of plant taxonomy, the Thorne system of plant classification was devised by the American botanist Robert F. Thorne in 1968, and he continued to issue revisions over many years.
Some versions of the system are available online. The Bioinformatics Working Group Center for the Study of Digital Libraries at Texas A&M University lists the March 1999 version. James Reveal's course lecture notes also gives an account of the Thorne system at that time, with an extensive listing of synonyms, both nomenclatural and taxonomic, for each name in the system together with several other classification systems.
For a discussion of the various suffixes used for superorders, see Brummitt 1992, and Thorne 1992. In this latter paper, Thorne sets out his reasons for abandoning -florae for -anae, following contemporary practice.

1968 System

Monocotyledons

Superorders
The 1992 system lists 69 orders and 440 families

Summary

The 2007 system lists 12 subclasses, 35 superorders, 87 orders, 40 suborders, and 472 families. It uses the suffixes given in the following example.
Class Magnoliopsida - 12 subclasses
;Subclasses
Note: Monocotyledons are represented here by 3 separate subclasses 3–5

Works by Thorne