Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Ampelography
/ˌæmpɪˈlɒɡrəfi/noun
The identification of grape varieties by the shape of leaf, shoot and cluster.
The Greek roots
ἄμπελος
ámpelos
grapevine
γραφή
graphḗ
writing, description
Literally: “vine writing”
The story of the word
The discipline took its name from a Latin treatise of 1661, the Ampelographia of the Silesian physician Philipp Jakob Sachs. In one late myth Ampelos was a young satyr loved by Dionysus, who turned him into the first vine after a fatal fall from a bull. DNA profiling has since demoted a good deal of what leaf-shape ampelography once asserted, including the parentage of Cabernet Sauvignon.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
Same family
ampelopsisgeographybiography
In a sentence
Careful ampelography showed the old block held three varieties, not the single one on the label.