There's a bunch of Latin and Greek in botany. I'm pretty intimidated by all the scientific names for species, and even families. The words for a lot of the kinds of things I'm interested in right now, that is of structures, relationships, and behaviors, are much more tractable. A lot of words like "stem" or "flower" might feel familiar, but oddly enough, I'm finding terms that seem intimidating are more revealing in their ability to compose with other intimidating seeming words.

As an example of this "phyllotaxy" looks intimidating. But if you knew that "phyllo-" meant "leaves" and "-taxy"/"-taxis" meant "arrangement," you'd be good to go. And if you came upon "rhizotaxy" later, you'd at least know it meant the arrangement of something. (spoiler for later in this list, "rhizo" means "root").

I recently got A Botanist's Vocabulary as a gift. It's very good, but the organization (the alphabet) doesn't quite work how I'd like. The cross references for related and synonymous terms (and the illustrations) are helpful, but an organization that gives a few more related categories for words and parts of words is something else I'm keeping track of. This post is to note the technical terms that mostly seem to combine well and often.

Before the useful words, a brief note on how this continues the purpose outlined in previous posts. Entrepreneurial/business thinking is an invasive species. I don't want to turn plant vocabulary along with its models and lessons into software because everything should be thought of in terms of software. This is overall a horticultural project of putting these metaphors, models, and stories into the cracks between the asphalt in our heads. Learning these words is a path toward bewilderment and promoting a broader sense of flourishing than the economic common sense that has been beaten into us.

Eating

-vore

x-eater. Examples you might know are:

carnivore: eating animals
herbivore: eating plants

But here's a broader view called the Getz Diagram.

-phage

Woah now. What's with this "- phage" suffix? I guess the distinction is whether something is a gatherer (a "totivore") or a miner (an "olophage"). I don't know where you draw the distinction here, but generally gatherers do more moving around to get their food. "x-vory" (eating x) and "y-phagy" (eating y) seem like squishy distinctions in some cases, but anyways, here's a couple of words that use those suffixes:

Frugivory: Eating fruit
Geogphagia: Eating rocks/dirt/earth

So what's cool is if you know half the word, you can probably guess at some more. If frugivory is eating fruit, and you know "avi-" is the prefix for birds, well then bam, you can probably guess an avivore eats birds. Good stuff.

Anyways, here are some birds eating dirt.

I suspect my guesses of what is a "-vore" and what is a "-phage" would get better with more examples, but if I see either one, I know a thing is being eaten. Good stuff.

-troph

"Trophic levels" are what link in a foodchain/foodweb an organism fits, but if you see "-trophy" or "-troph" it's more about nutrition/consumption in a more general way than "eating." Here are a couple you might see:

Autotroph: Obtaining energy from an inorganic source, like sunlight (aka photoautotrophy).
Heterotroph: Obtaining energy from other organisms.

Incidentally, there are autotrophs that aren't photoautotrophs and plants that are heterotrophic, like the mycoheterotrophic (fungus eating) ghost plant.

Why is the ghost plant "mycoheterotrophic" and not "mycoheterophagic" or "mycoheterovorous?" I don't know. If I saw any of the three I would know what it meant, and if I said any of the wrong ones to a real and kind botanist, they'd set me straight. Good enough for me, for now.

Self and Other

And just like that, we stumbled onto our next kind of words of interest: "auto" (self) and "hetero" (other/different). Let's toss in "homo" (same/self) and "allo" (other) while we're at it.

Auto-

Autogamy: self-pollination
Autochory: dispersal of seeds without any

Allo-

Allogamy: cross-pollination
Allopatric: having a population in multiple areas

Hetero-

Heterophyllus: having leaves of a different shape
Heterogamous: having distinct male and female flowers

Homo-

Homology: having a structure common to two ancestors like gorilla arms and human arms (contrasted with "analogy" like bird and insect wings, where both are created to solve the problem of flight, but don't share a common ancestry where the structure developed. This is also called "convergent evolution"/"convergence")
Homochromous: being all of the same color

Plant Shapes and Parts

If you're looking for a list of words for plant parts, this glossary of plant "morphology" has a good larger list. Before getting too much further, "-phyte," "-phytic," and "phyto-" should be noted to mean "plant." It comes up a lot!

-phyte/-phytic

epiphyte: a plant that grows on other plants
epiphytic: growing on plants

phyto-

phytogenesis: growth and development of plants

-morph- (shape)

morphology: the study of shapes/forms
xeromorphic: structures adapted to dry climates

There are also a couple of words that are too important to worry about how they combine with others.

fruit: the thing with the seed(s). What we call "nuts" are usually fruits or parts of fruits. Tomatoes are fruits. Cucumbers are fruits. Olives? Oh boy you better believe they're fruits.
vegitative parts: non-reproductive parts of a plant

Speaking of fruits, -carp is the suffix that means fruit. And a few location/relation type words (peri-, endo-, meso-, exo-) are good for talking about the tasty parts of stone fruits (like peaches or avacados).

peri- (about/around)

pericarp: fruit part that surrounds the seed
peripterous: surrounded by a wing

endo- (center)

endocarp: the part of the fruit closest to the seed

meso- (middle)

mesocarp: the middle part of a pericarp
mesophyte: plants that aren't adapted to a specifically wet or dry environment

exo- (outer)

exocarp: the outer part of a pericarp (eg. "skin" of an apple)

epi- (on)

epicarp: same as exocarp
epilithic: growing attached to rock

-a (not)

apetalous: not having petals
achlorophyllous: not having chlorophyll
abiotic: the non-living parts of an ecosystem

-phyll (leaf)

triphyllous: having three leaves
epiphyllous: attached to the leaf of a plant
chlorophyll: the pigment in green leaves

clad- (branch)

cladogram: a branching diagram used to describe the ancestry of organisms
cladophyll: stem that looks and functions like a leaf
phylloclade: cladophyll

rhizo- (mass of roots)

rhizome: an underground stem that sends out shoots, roots, and maybe produces tubers
rhizotaxy: the arrangement of roots

pheno- (show)

phenotype: the observable characteristics and traits in an organism (also differentiation within a species)
phenology: the study of observable lifecycle events (eg. leaves falling, flowers blooming, etc)

Lifecycle and Evolution

You might have found some linguistics mistakes already. If you're worried I'm going to do it again, strap in. I'm about to fuck up:

-gene/genetic (also "gonos" for offspring and procreation)

phylogenetic (tree): the evolutionary tree (may be drawn as a cladogram, but there are other interesting options)

-geny/-genic/ (production)

phylogeny: the history of the evolution of an organism
ontogeny: the study of an organism's lifespan

By the way, goofballs used to think that phylogeny and ontogeny (evolution and lifecycle) were connected in a weird way. I guess they aren't, and human embryos don't go through a fish phase, lizard phase, and hamster phase in the womb (or whatever the recapitulation theory says that's probably less fun but more reasonable on its face).

Ok. So some things might happen in a plant's life. They might produce things, which can be described as -ferous

-ferous

coniferous: producing cones
nectariferous: producing nectar
frugiferous: producting fruit
oviferous: producing eggs

Next up is "-tropism." This denotes a response (slowish movement/growth) to some stimulus (faster movement, like with venus fly traps, is called... "rapid plant movement"). Don't get "-tropic" and "-trophic" mixed up. The second one is about eating. This one is about moving.

-tropic

hydrotropism: movement or growth in response to water
phototropism: movement or growth in response to light
thigotropism: movement or growth in response to touch/contact

Study

-ology comes up a lot. The thing in front of it is sometimes new.

-ology (study)

biology: study of living things
mycology: study of fungi
ecology: study of environment
denrology: study of trees

-nomy (system)

taxonomy: arrangement of systems

Note here that "taxon" (singular) or "taxa" (plural) is a way to refer to an individual point in a cladogram. As in, you might say "this taxon is [some species name]" or "this taxon is [some genus name]"

Seed Dispersal & Pollination

So the suffix for seed dispersal is -chory, and for pollination is -phily.

-chory

allochory: seed dispersal with an external vector (wind, animal, etc.)
autochory: seed dispersal without an external vector
anemochory: seed dispersal by wind
ballochory: seed dispersal by "explosive dehiscense (fruit opening)" of the fruit (check this out. And this)
hydrochory: seed dispersal by water
myrmechory: seed dispersal by ants (the seeds have an "elaisome" attached, which the ants feed to their larve and put the seed in their big ant trash pile, which is apparently a good germination site)
anthropochory: seed dispersal by people
chiropterochory: seed dispersal by bats
malacochory: seed dispersal by molluscs
ornithochory: seed dispersal by birds
zoochory: seed dispersal by animals
epizoochory: seed dispersal by animals (seeds travel on the outside of them, like burrs and foxtails)
endozoochory: seed dispersal by animals (seeds travel inside of them, like if )
diplochory: two-phase dispersal

-phily

anemophily: pollination by wind
hydrophily: pollination by water
entomophily: pollination by insects
chiropterophily: pollination by bats
ornithophily: pollination by birds
zoophily: pollination by animals

By the way, bees can do a thing called "buzz pollination" where they bite the anther (where the pollen comes out) and vibrate to shake it out.

Habitat

Sometimes it's wet, sometimes it's dry, and sometimes it's in between.

xero- (dry)

xerophyte: plants that grow in dry conditions
xeric: dry habitats
xeromorphic: having dry habitat adaptive structures

hydro- (water/wet)

hydrophyte: plants that grow in wet conditions/water
hydric: wet habitat

meso- (medium)

mesophyte: plants that grow in conditions of moderate moisture
mesic: habitat of moderate moisture

halo- (salt)

halophyte: salt tolerant plants

aero- (air)

aerophyte: plant that grows on another plant (also epiphyte)

eco-

ecotone: transition area between two biomes
ecocline: an area that denotes a population that has a particular trait (ecotype if multiple traits are affected)
ecotope: smallest designations in ecologically distinct landscape features

Number

There are prefixes for fractional numbers too apparently. Unsurprisingly, Wikipedia has a big list. One through 12 all come up a lot. Here are a few usages:

uni- (one)

unifoliate: having only one leaf
unisexual: having only male or only female functional reproductive parts

mono- (one)

monocot: plants that have one seed leaf and leaves that are parallel
monotypic: a taxon with one type of a lower ranking (eg. a genus with only one species)

bi- (two)

bicolored: having two colors
bisexual: having both female (egg) and male (sperm) reproductive cells in the same organism or structure
biennial: having a two year life cycle

di- (two)

dicot: plants that have two seed leaves that are net-veined
didymous: occuring in pairs

tri- (three)

trifoliate: having three leaflets
trimerous: having flower parts in multiples of three
tripartite: divided into three parts

quadri- (four)

quadrate: square/rectangular
quadrifoliate: has 4 leaves

tetra- (four)

tetramerous: having flower parts in multiples of four
tetraploid: having 4 sets of chromosomes

And so on. Numbers just keep going.

That's it.

There are a bunch more words, but these are the ones I've liked so far, and they're not the typical things I remember from junior high biology. Have fun. Oh. And here's a favorite plant of mine lately: lithops.