Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Geotropism
/dʒiˈɒtrəpɪzəm/noun
The growth of a plant in response to gravity, roots turning down and shoots turning up.
The Greek roots
γῆ
gê
earth, ground
τροπή
tropḗ
a turning
Literally: “turning by the earth”
The story of the word
Coined in the nineteenth century, when the assumption was that the plant was responding to the earth itself. It responds to gravity, so botanists increasingly write gravitropism instead, and the older word survives mainly in textbooks and exam papers. Root caps do the sensing with starch grains that settle to the low side of the cell, which is why seedlings on the space station lose their sense of down.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
geologygeographyphototropismtropic
In a sentence
Lay the sprouted bean on its side and geotropism will bend the root back down within a day.