Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Mesophyte
/ˈmɛsəfaɪt/noun
A plant suited to ground that is neither dry nor waterlogged.
The Greek roots
μέσος
mésos
middle
φυτόν
phytón
plant
Literally: “middle plant”
The story of the word
Between the water plants and the desert plants sits almost everything else, and botany gave that middle a label. A mesophyte carries no special equipment for hoarding water or shedding it, which covers most crops, most broadleaf trees and most of a temperate meadow. μέσος is the same middle as in Mesopotamia, the land between two rivers.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → scientific coinage → English
Same family
hydrophytexerophytemesolithicmesosphere
In a sentence
Most garden plants are mesophytes, which is why they sulk in drought and in flood alike.