Lawanda's Garden

      Most basic Master Gardener training classes include a section on botany.  Here, we learn words to describe the parts of flowers like petal, pistil and stamen; tree parts including crown, branch union, spur and leader; leaf shapes like pinnate, palmate, elliptical and ovate; and other terms like bulb, corm, tuber and rhizome.

      I thought I had a decent knowledge of botany (and I thought my gardening library was complete) until I came across a book entitled A Botanist’s Vocabulary by Susan K. Pell and Bobbi Angell. There are words to describe every little part of every plant – so many things I had never even thought of or noticed!  There are words for things that I never would have imagined even needed a descriptive word.  A perusal though the book for that reason alone is fun and worthwhile.  It will make you more observant and appreciative of all of your plants (and their many parts).

      Here are some of the words I have added to my botany vocabulary. 

• Nuciferous – producing nuts.  (What is wrong with “nut producer?”
• Obdiplostemonous – I just liked the long six-syllable word!  Doesn’t it just roll off your tongue??  It means having two distinct sets of stamens, the outer whorl opposite the petals and the inner whorl opposite the sepals. Approximately 20 plant families have flowers like this including some you know like geraniums, oxalis, sorrels and heathers.
• Foveolate – pitted with small depressions.  This is one of nineteen(!) words used to describe the surface of pollen grains or spores.
• Epicotyl – the region of an embryo or seedling above the cotyledons.  If you’ve ever planted from seed, you know that the first leaf-like structures to appear are cotyledons, not actual leaves.  The epicotyl area is the length of stem between the cotyledons and the true leaves that form shortly thereafter.  Who knew?  And why does that short little stem piece even need a name?
• Epigynous – flower with an inferior ovary.  Inferior means “below.”  An example is the daffodil.  Take a look when they bloom in spring and you’ll see a swelling in the stem just below the bloom – that is the ovary.
• Inosculation – the fusing together of woody stems where they come in contact with each other.  Sometimes a close look at a tree will reveal that it is actually two trees growing right next to each other and attached at the bottom.  This can also happen when two branches of one tree touch and fuse together.  Inosculation is differentiated from “contiguous” which means “touching and continuing without a break, but not fused.” 
• Radicle – the first root of a germinating seed.  You can see this easily if you pre-sprout bean or pea seeds before planting or if you sprout alfalfa or other seeds in a jar on your countertop.

There are 1300 terms defined in A Botanist’s Vocabulary!  It’s not the kind of book you’d want to settle in and read for a few hours on a winter afternoon, but it is interesting to find out just how much you don’t know!