Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Azalea
/əˈzeɪliə/noun
A shrub of the rhododendron family grown for its mass of showy spring flowers.
The Greek roots
ἀζαλέος
azaléos
dry, parched
Literally: “the dry one”
Follow a root:ἀζαλέος1 word
The story of the word
Linnaeus named the genus in 1753 on the belief that these plants wanted dry ground. They want the opposite, moist acid soil that drains well, so the name preserves a mistake and has done for nearly three centuries. Botanists later folded Azalea into Rhododendron, leaving azalea as a gardener's word rather than a genus.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
In a sentence
The azaleas flowered for ten days and made the rest of the garden look apologetic.