Plants & CreaturesGreek → English
Rhododendron
/ˌroʊdəˈdɛndrən/noun
A shrub or small tree with leathery evergreen leaves and heavy trusses of flowers.
The Greek roots
ῥόδον
rhódon
rose
δένδρον
déndron
tree
Literally: “rose tree”
The story of the word
In Greek the rhodódendron was the oleander, the poisonous shrub of the Mediterranean roadside, and English used the word that way in the 1600s. Linnaeus reassigned it in 1753 to the mountain genus we mean now. The poison did not entirely leave with the plant: rhododendron nectar carries grayanotoxin, and Xenophon's soldiers ate honey made from it near Trebizond in 401 BC and spent a day vomiting and reeling in the snow.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → Latin → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
Same family
rhodiumdendritephilodendrondendrochronology
In a sentence
The rhododendron had swallowed the path and half the fence with it.