1.5 Plant

Use this domain for general words for all plants. Use a book of pictures to identify plant names and the scientific name. Languages divide plants into various domains that are not always comparable from language to language. Criterial features may be characteristics (trees and bushes are distinguished by size and number of trunks) and use (grass and weeds are distinguished by their desirability). A common distinction is between trees and non-trees, with trees described as being big, woody, and having a life expectancy of several years, while non-trees are small, non-woody, and have a life expectancy of typically not more than one year (Heine, Bernd and Karsten Legere. 1995. Swahili plants. Rudiger Koppe Verlag: Koln.). Agricultural societies will divide plants into wild and cultivated. However most plants for which there are names have some use. Therefore it does not seem helpful to divide plant names into domains for useful and non-useful plants. Since only parts of plants are eaten, edible parts of plants are listed under the domain 'Food'. Some languages may have more domains than are used in this list, others may have fewer. The classification system used here does not agree entirely with the system used by botanists. For instance botanists do not classify all the tree species together. The palm trees belong to the class Monocotyledoneae and are classified with lilies, bananas, and orchids. Apple and cherry trees belong to the class Dicotyledoneae and are classified in the rose family along with roses and blackberries. The acacia tree also belongs to the class Dicotyledoneae and is classified in the pulse family along with lupines and beans. However most folk taxonomies bring all the trees together. The scientific classification system for plants and animals is taken from: Carruth, Gorton, ed. 1989. The Volume Library, Vols. 1 and 2. The Southwestern Company: Nashville.

OMC Codes: 
137 Flora
Louw Nida Codes: 
3 Plants
3A Plants
  • What words refer to all plants?
    plant, flora, greenery, vegetation, herbage
  • What words describe types of plants?
    angiosperm, annual, aquatic, biennial, bracken, brake, creeper, deciduous, edible, flower, greens, herbaceous, hybrid, leafy, legume, luscious, parasite, perennial, plankton, pulse, sedge, succulent, tropical, vegetable, vine, weed, woody, wort
  • What words are used to describe plants that grow wild?
    wild, uncultivated
  • What words refer to cultivated plants?
    cultivated
  • What words refer to a group of plants?
    bale, bouquet, bracken, brush, bunch, canopy, clump, cluster, cover, covert, corsage, crop, culture, forest, greenery, grove, growth, hassock, haystack, herbage, jungle, kelp, nosegay, orchard, scrub, sheaf, shock, shrubbery, skein, spray, stand, sward, thicket, tuft, turf, tussock, underbrush, undergrowth, vegetation, verdure, vermin
  • What words refer to the study of plants?
    botany, botanist, herbalist