Question

In his 1789 landmark publication Genera Plantarum, French botanist Antoine Laurent de Jussieu sought to reform plant taxonomy by replacing the artificial system established by Carl Linnaeus half a century earlier. Whereas Linnaeus categorized flora almost exclusively by counting reproductive organs—a pragmatic heuristic that facilitated quick identification but often grouped structurally disparate families together—Jussieu advocated for a "natural method." His framework evaluated multiple morphological characters simultaneously, assigning variable weight to traits based on their physiological stability across generations. However, Jussieu’s insistence on holistic evaluation created significant practical hurdles for contemporary field botanists. Lacking standardized diagnostic keys for subterranean root structures and delicate floral anatomy, early collectors found Jussieu’s multi-variate system far less manageable in the field than Linnaeus’s mechanical numerical counting. Consequently, despite the theoretical superiority of Jussieu's natural classification, institutional herbariums throughout Western Europe continued to employ the Linnaean framework for administrative and instructional cataloging well into the nineteenth century.

Based on the passage, which of the following can be inferred regarding eighteenth-century field botanists using the Linnaean system of classification?