Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Geophyte
/ˈdʒiːəfaɪt/noun
A plant that survives the hard season underground as a bulb, corm, tuber or rhizome.
The Greek roots
γῆ
gê
earth, ground
φυτόν
phytón
plant
Literally: “earth plant”
The story of the word
Raunkiær sorted the world's plants in 1904 by where they keep the buds that will start next year's growth, and the geophyte keeps them below the soil where frost and drought cannot reach. Every spring bulb in a northern garden qualifies, and so does the potato. The classification still runs on the same two Greek pieces, earth and plant.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- early 20th century
Same family
geologygeographygeodehydrophyte
In a sentence
In a dry summer the geophytes simply go under and wait it out.