Editing Identification key (section)

== History ==
[[File:Lamarck's_key.png|thumb|Identification key published in Lamarck's ''Flore française'', Volume 1.]]
The conceptual origins of the modern identification key can be traced back to antiquity. [[Theophrastus]] categorized organisms into "subdivisions" based on dichotomous characteristics. The seventeenth-century Chinese herbalist, Pao Shan, in his treatise ''Yeh-ts'ai Po-Iu'', included a systematic categorization of plants based on their apparent characteristics specifically for the purposes of identification.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=2}}

Seventeenth-century naturalists, including [[John Ray]], [[Augustus Quirinus Rivinus|Rivinius]], and [[Nehemiah Grew]], published examples of bracketed tables. However, these examples were not strictly keys in the modern sense of an analytical device used to identify a single specimen, since they often did not lead to a single end point, and instead functioned more as synopses of classification schemes.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|pages=3–8}}

The first analytical identification key is credited to [[Jean-Baptiste Lamarck|Lamarck]] who included several in his 1778 book, ''Flore Françoise.'' Lamarck's key follows more or less the same design as the modern dichotomous, bracketed key.<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=10}}

[[Alphonso Wood]] was the first American to use identification keys in 1845. Other early instances of keys are found in the works of [[Asa Gray]] and [[William Harry Evans|W. H. Evans]].<ref name=":2" />{{Rp|page=|pages=12–14}}

=== Terminology ===
Identification keys are known historically and contemporarily by many names, including analytical key, entomological key, artificial key,<ref name=":2" /> diagnostic key,<ref name=":3" /> determinator,<ref name=":0" /> and taxonomic key<ref>{{Cite web |last=Bohemier |first=Kayleigh |title=Yale University Library Research Guides: Taxonomic Keys: Home |url=https://guides.library.yale.edu/keys |access-date=2024-10-20 |website=guides.library.yale.edu |language=en}}</ref>

Within the biological literature, identification keys are referred to simply as ''keys''.<ref>{{Cite book |title=A dictionary of biology |date=2008 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-920462-5 |edition=6th |series=Oxford paperback reference |location=Oxford |pages=356 |chapter=key (identification key)}}</ref> They are also commonly referred to in general as dichotomous keys,<ref name=":5">{{Cite book |last=Lawrence |first=George H. M. |title=Taxonomy of Vascular Plants |date=1951 |publisher=The Macmillan Company |edition=1st |location=New York |pages=225–8}}</ref> though this term strictly refers to a specific type of identification key (see [[#Types of keys|Types of keys]]).