Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Dendrology
/dɛnˈdrɑlədʒi/noun
The branch of botany dealing with trees and other woody plants.
The Greek roots
δένδρον
déndron
tree
λόγος
lógos
study, account
Literally: “study of trees”
The story of the word
δένδρον is a tree, and dendrology in practice means learning to name trees by bark, bud, twig and leaf, in winter as well as summer. The root also reached the brain: Wilhelm His named the branching input fibres of a nerve cell dendrites in the 1880s because under the microscope they look like a crown of bare twigs. Rhododendron is the rose tree, and philodendron the tree-lover, named for its habit of climbing.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → New Latin → English
- First recorded
- 18th century
Same family
dendriterhododendronphilodendrondendrochronology
In a sentence
The dendrology course meets outdoors in February, when there are no leaves to help.
Her dendrology is good enough to name an oak from the acorn cup alone.