In 1760 the French zoologist
Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the yellow-green grosbeak in his
Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in
Cayenne in French Guiana. He used the French name
Le Gros-bec de Cayenne and the Latin name
Coccothraustes Cayanensis. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the
binomial system and are not recognised by the
International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist
Carl Linnaeus updated his
Systema Naturae for the
twelfth edition he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. Linnaeus mistakenly claimed that the species occurred in Canada rather than Cayenne and introduced the
specific name canadensis for Canada where the bird does not occur. This species is now placed in the
genus Caryothraustes that was introduced by the German naturalist
Ludwig Reichenbach in 1850. There are four
subspecies. ==Distribution and habitat==