Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Hydrophyte
/ˈhaɪdrəfaɪt/noun
A plant adapted to grow in water or in permanently waterlogged ground.
The Greek roots
ὕδωρ
hýdōr
water
φυτόν
phytón
plant
Literally: “water plant”
The story of the word
Botany needed shelf labels for plants sorted by how much water they live with, and built them out of two of the commonest Greek nouns. The set came as a family: xerophyte for the dry end, mesophyte for the middle, hydrophyte for the wet. A water lily is the textbook case, spending nothing on drought defences it will never need.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
xerophytemesophyteneophytehydrant
In a sentence
The pond survey counted eleven hydrophytes, most of them fully submerged.