“It occurred to me this past open weekend that gardening could really just be described as a language. Just like painting or poetry or music, of course, it’s a form of expression. We’re showing a bit of ourselves indirectly though plants, textures, materials and a sense of place. We are all speaking the same language, but when it comes to decisions about plants, how to garden, the ‘rights and wrongs’, to be quiet or loud, we just have different accents. Sometimes that accent is hard to understand. Some people are sticklers for grammar, while others focus on the story.”
~~ Alex Lim, “The Lim Garden” (A private 1-acre woodland garden in Woodinville WA; construction began in 2017.)

​ This is not your typical "dictionary." This is not A to Z. It groups words/terms within categories of how the words are used. It assumes you do not know these words (hence no A-Z) but rather, you are trying to find the proper word for a vague concept. These words may be used in many of my blog and other article postings. 

© Copyright Joe Seals. Do not reproduce any part of this in any form.

​DESCRIPTORS FOR PLANTS AND PLANT HABITS
 
Evergreen = Describes any plant that does not lose the total of its leaves in the Winter (or other season). Also a noun, almost always referring to a conifer.
 
Deciduous = Describes any plant that does drop all its leaves in the Winter (or some other season). Although used by most gardeners to describe trees and shrubs, the word is appropriate to those herbaceous perennials that “die down” each Winter.
 
Woody = Describes a plant that develops “woodiness.”
 
Herbaceous = Describes a plant that does not develop woodiness. Often refers to only those plants that also die completely to the ground each year, usually in Winter, and can be called a deciduous perennial. But it is also appropriate to evergreen non-woody plants.
 
Caespitose (pronounced ˈse-spə-ˌtōs , say-spih-tōhse) = Growing in small dense clumps or tufts, usually with a dense, knotty, non-running rhizomatous base. Many perennials, including Agapanthus, hostas, and clumping grasses, exhibit this habit.
 
Surculose (pronounced sur-kyuh-lohs, sir-kuu-lōhs) = Very like caespitose but describing woody plants that sucker from the base. Mostly shrubs but a few trees that produce lateral growth via creeping roots, stolons, or rhizomes, often very near the mother plant WHILE other times a good distance away. Some of the many plants included here: Abelia, Berberis (barberry), Buddleja (butterfly bush), Caryopteris (bluebeard), Forsythia, Itea (sweetspire), Kerria (Japanese rose), Mahonia (barberry), Nandina (heavenly bamboo), Philadelphus (mock orange), Rhus (sumac), Spiraea (Spring bloomers), Syringa (lilacs), and “osiers.” (“Osier” refers to some Salix [willows] and certain Cornus [ground-branching “dogwoods”]; the new stems of which are long and pliable and are used in basket weaving, as well as being brightly colored in some species). Even aspens (among a few species of Populus), a well-known tree, is both revered and distained for its surculose growth habit. Various Rosa species, too, like to run around and anyone who grows hybrid roses on rootstock knows about “suckering.” [See photo, below.]
 
Many of these produce such growth tightly against the mother plant, creating dense mounds or clusters or arching forms. The root sprouts of those that put out the distant growth are often called simply “suckers.” With some species, the suckers are the major part of growth and in many cases, such as for erosion control, they make the plant invaluable. With many species, excess suckering is caused by damage or stress to the mother plant. Such “suckers” should not be confused with the term “water sprouts.”
 
Surculose should not be confused with sucralose, a synthetic sweetener.
 
 
Espalier (pronounced i-ˈspal-yər or i-ˈspal-yā; I prefer ess-pall-yay) = A tree or shrub that is pruned and trained so that its branches grow in a flat, single plane, often in an ornamental pattern. Often right up against a wall but more productive when grown in the open.
 
Hedge = A uniform row of plants, usually evergreen and preferably small-leafed, planted closely together and typically shaped or clipped. They perform the function of a wall, fence, screen or wind- or sound-break.
 
Naturalize = Certain annual flowers drop their seed, which in turn germinates the following year and then the following year and on and on.
 
Perennialize = Some annuals do better than naturalize. They drop their seed just about all year ‘round and those seeds will pop up just about all year and the ensuing plants will flower just about all year (in milder climates). Of course, the parent plants die but so many offspring continue to fill the garden space all year round that many gardeners think of them as perennials. A behavior in the mildest parts of the country, of course.
 
Hardy = In simplest parlance, it means “Winter hardy” or tolerant of cold in Winter. It does not mean “easy”, “durable”, etc.; in which case, it’s usually because of confusion with the word “hearty.”
 
“Hardy,” as commonly used, is relative to where the garden is situated. In this regional sense, it means it will withstand the Winter cold of one’s own garden and not necessarily that of, say, northern Minnesota (unless one gardens in northern Minnesota).
 
Plants are listed as “hardy to” a specific USDA Zone or range of Zones. A plant listed as “hardy in Zone 4,” for example, indicates it should survive Winter temperatures as low as -30°F., which is the average minimum Winter temperature according to the USDA map. A plant listed as hardy in Zones 4 to/through 9 means it will tolerate the Winter cold of 4 but will also grow in those less-cold zones.
 
There’s more to it. “Hardy” is part of a slightly different concept that sets relative tolerances primarily for seasonal plants (“annuals”). There are “hardy”, “half-hardy, and “tender” (not hardy) annual flowers and vegetables.
 
Hardy in this comparative sense means the plant will tolerate frost (usually at 32° to 36°F) and generally can withstand temperatures below freezing (below 32°F).
 
Half-hardy means it will tolerate cool weather (in most cases, preferring it) and may survive a light frost but can’t withstand hard freezes (below 28°F and usually an extended period of time).
 
Tender means the plant is cold-sensitive and will not survive sustained temperatures below 32°F. In other words, a plant that dies or is seriously damaged with the first period of frosts. It’s usually what most call “tropical plants” but it includes most Summer bulbs and Summer annuals (flowers and vegetables).
 
Although most gardeners’ Winters aren’t well suited to growing true tropical perennial plants,
including trees and shrubs, gardeners throughout the country do grow a lot of seasonal tropical plants. For instance, tomato plants and impatiens, both from tropical climes, are grown as Summer annuals. The same with most other Summer annual flowers and Summer vegetables.
 
“Sleeper, creeper, leaper” = Certainly not a technical term but an insightful one. Many plants have a growing habit in approximately three stages. In the first year/season following planting, they seemingly don’t grown but maybe an inch. That’s the “sleeping.” In actuality, they’re spending their energy putting down a root system that will anchor them in place and will start to pull up appropriate nutrients. In the second year/season, they do more of that root production but they also do a bit of “creeping,” putting out some new foliage to help with the photosynthesis process. Finally, in their third year, they take advantage of the enlarged root system and “leap,” putting on an impressive show just before you act on your thought of yanking it because “it ain’t doing much.”
 
“Cristina, being something of a gardener, knew well enough that certain plants may appear to remain stationary for years while they are really making roots underground, only to break into surprising vigour overhead at a given moment.” ~~ Vita Sackville-West (Victoria Mary, Lady Nicolson; novelist, poet, garden designer), from “The Dark Island,” 1934
 
Day-length Sensitive  (Photoperiodism) = while most plants flower at a certain age no matter the day length, some plants initiate flowering (and, in some cases, consequently fruiting) only when the day length is 14 hours or more or they flower when the days are shorter in length. Examples include onions (some varieties like it long, some like it short), potatoes, spinach, chayote, and some beans, along with mums, marigolds, poinsettias (no, do not put them in a closet for the period before Christmas), cosmos, some sunflowers, kalanchoe, morning glories, pansy, and asters.

PLANT NAMING
 
Nomenclature = The naming of plants ─ indeed, all living things ─ in a scientific manner.
 
Botanical name = The “scientific” name given to a plant, consisting of two parts:

• the Genus = the first part; it’s italicized.

• and the Specific epithet = the second part of a botanical name, also italicized, and together with the genus, it refers to a particular kind of plant (a species, which is spelled the same whether it is singular or plural).

 
Although sometimes called “Latin” names, botanical names are much more than classic Latin in origin and structure. Another name often used is “binomial” (both as a noun and an adjective; pronounced by-NOH-mee-uhl) referring to the two basic parts.
 
Cultivar = A horticultural variety, strain or race that originated and has been perpetuated under cultivation. A contraction of “cultivated variety.” Cultivars are given a name, usually distinguished by the use of single quotation marks, as in Zinnia elegans ‘Tom Thumb’.
 
The word “cultivar” has supplanted the word “variety” in almost every instance in home gardens. Rose varieties are cultivars. Apple tree varieties are cultivars.
 
A “clone” is any plant propagated via vegetative methods to beget a new plant identical (or nearly so) to the parent. All cultivars are propagated in this way.
 
“Nativar” = A cultivated variety selected from a native species for its horticultural qualities and offered as a cultivar (“cultivated variety”) on the market. It could arise originally as a selection from local wild stock, a seedling or mutation from a garden plant, or from selective breeding (hybridization) within a single species or among two separate species. It’s a very recent word, maybe first used in 2018 or a bit earlier. It seems to have value to the industry in helping identify selections and/or hybrids of native plants as well as have value in marketing them, especially to customers within a given region. It changes the idea of what "native" means and to what level of “native” a plant must be to assert their ecological role in urban landscapes.
 
Variety = This is still a valid word. It applies to plants in the natural environment (non-garden) that vary, as a group, from the typical species. Hence Ceanothus griseus variety horizontalis, a prostrate variation of a typically upright species. No single quotation marks.
 
Hybrid = Originally it was a plant that came from “crossing” one species with another (technically, an interspecific hybrid). Our modern roses are “complex hybrids,” meaning they’ve been created by crossing many different species over many years.
 
“x” = This is the mark that is put somewhere in the botanical name to indicate that the plant is a hybrid. Such as Viola x wittrockiana, the pansy. Sometimes it’s put at the very beginning of a botanical name, such as in the case of  X Chiranthodendron lenzii, a “bigeneric hybrid.” Notice that the “x” is a different font than the basic text; that’s just to make it clear it’s a hybrid and not a weird word that you might find close to xylophone in the dictionary. Notice, too, that a name following the “x” is not italicized; they are  nothospecies  and nothogenera (notho = hybrid) and are artificial creations.
 
Strain = The collective descendants from a common ancestor that share a uniform morphological or physiological character. All open-pollinated seeds are essentially “strains;” although the resultant plants (and their fruits) are similar overall, they bear differences, albeit usually subtle. When the difference is strictly flower color, the seed strain often bears names such as Zinnia elegans “Benary’s Giant Mixed” (note double quotation marks). When a single color is selected from such a mixed strain, it bears the name of that selected color as a cultivar, hence Zinnia elegans ‘Benary’s Giant Apricot Blush’ (note single quotes).
 
Strain is synonymous with or includes the word  Grex  (plural  greges), which is applied to all the descendants of a specified pair of orchids (the “mom and pop”) and is used almost exclusively by orchid specialists.

IN THE GARDEN AND GARDEN ACTIVITIES
 
Soil (vs. “dirt”) = A natural complex of minerals, organic matter, and living organisms into which we plant our favorite posies in the great outdoors. It’s the earth. 
 
Dirt = Per my first year horticulture instructor, it’s “what you get out of your vacuum cleaner bag.” Per a biologist’s philosophical quote, it’s “matter out of place.” In either case, plants are not set into this. “How dare you treat your soil like dirt!” ~~ Joel Salatin (farmer, lecturer, author)
 
Potting Soil, Potting Mix = A mix composed of any number of natural or artificial products — often some combination of shredded moss peat, perlite, vermiculite, composted wood product — for use in containers. Not to be confused with actual soil, which includes the living component.
 
Mulch = Any material used on top of the ground for moisture retention, weed control or simply ornamentation. The material can be organic such as compost, leaf mold, or packaged “mulch” or it can be inorganic such as rubber pellets or rocks. Noun or verb.
 
Topdressing = Essentially a thin mulch of organic matter, preferably at least partially decomposed, with the primary purpose of feeding the edaphon starting with the decomposers and the bioturbators. Although it does serve many of the same other purposes as a mulch, it does so minimally aside from being effectual edaphon chow.
 
Compost = n: Decayed organic matter as a product of composting; v: To allow or encourage organic matter to decay at least a little. 
 
Amendment, planter mix = Organic material worked into the ground soil in preparation for planting. The substance sold as “amendment” makes for a nice mulch as well and would be better used as such. No longer a recommended practice. Many accept “amendment” to mean anything that is added into the soil, including fertilizers, soil enhancers of all kinds, as well as simply sand or other soil “conditioner.”
 
Fertilizer = A natural or artificial material containing increased values of essential plant nutrients. Although pretty much anything organic (along with some inorganic products) contains essential plant nutrients, the word fertilizer is reserved for those materials that offer measurable and important nutrients.
 
Humus = The fraction of soil organic matter that is amorphous and without the cellular cake structure characteristic of plants, micro-organisms or animals. Primarily carbon. 
 
Loam = A soil composed of any combination of sand, silt, and/or clay particles. A USDA soil texture classification. Inaccurately but more poetically, to the gardener, it’s a fluffy, humusy soil rich with earthworms and ripe with the fragrance of geosmin.
 
Leaf mold = Partially decomposed leaves that are somewhere along the continuum between shredded leaves and humus. 
 
Drip Line = The imaginary line on the ground under the outside tips of the canopy of a tree. The furthermost lateral reach.
 
Hydrozone (and hydrozoning) = An area where plants of similar water requirements are gathered to make watering an easy manual task or to make automated watering efficient.
 
Berm = A mound or hill of earth. On a small scale, it’s the raised dam on the soil in a circular pattern (similar to a donut) around plants to provide a basin for watering. On a large scale, it’s a landscaping technique used to create interest, privacy, or screening. Tall, dense earthen berms are used to buffer noise. It also may divert water runoff from a slope.
 
Grafting = A method of propagation that is the uniting of a short length of stem of one plant (the “scion”) onto the larger stem or branch of a different plant (the “stock”).
 
Budding = A method of propagation that is the uniting of a very small piece of one plant —the bud but sometimes the bud and a piece of stem tissue — onto the stock. Budding is the traditional method of propagating roses and fruit trees.
 
Rootstock = The stock that is used for a particular characteristic or characteristics of its root system. Those characteristics can include dwarfing, difficult soil tolerance, soil-borne-disease tolerance and more.
 
Bolting = This is when a vegetable plant, primarily those grown for edible plant parts other than fruit, prematurely grows flower stalks and produces seeds, preventing the plant from bearing a vigorous harvest. Bolting redistributes a plant's energy away from producing leaves and roots to instead producing flowering stems and seeds. Bolting is induced by any of several stress-creators, such as unseasonable heat, lack of sufficient water, compacted root system, and root damage. 

​Connections to off-site web pages. All science based.

RHS -- UK's Royal Horticultural Society; plants, gardening advice.

​National Gardening Association -- information, research, on-line tools, community forums, newsletter.

Cornell Garden-Based Learning -- info on fruits, vegetables.

Dave's Garden -- guides, information, community, mail-order company reviews (THE place for that), interactive.

Garden Design -- based on the magazine of the same name; design, ideas, inspiration, gardening basics, plants.

Gardening Gone Wild -- design, photography, musings.

North American Native Plant Society -- growing native plants, conservation, sales.

The International Plant Names Index -- Kew, Harvard, and the Australian National Herbarium keeping ALL the plant names straight.

The Seed Site (UK) -- dedicated to seeds, database, photography, sowing instructions.

USDA Plants Database -- all the native plants of the U.S.

Xerces Society -- invertebrate (including and especially butterflies) conservation, activists, resources galore especially for gardeners, species profiles.

Missouri Botanical Garden Plant Finder -- detailed descriptions and growing information on thousands of plants; illustrated.

Cooperative Extension System (via USDA) -- an extensive directory of connections to all the state university sites where "science-based" is the motto.

Botanical Society of America, Resources -- long list of web links, book recommendations.

Garden Gate Greenhouse, Inc. Glossary (of gardening terms) -- the most extensive and easy to read "dictionary." Part of an extended website, the rest of which is commercial.

In no particular order.

Click on any book title for more info and a place to buy.​

American Horticultural Society Encyclopedia of Plants and Flowers -- 700+ pages of photos, descriptions, and growing info. With more than 8,000 plant entries, it's truly encyclopedic in scope.

Encyclopedia of Garden Plants for Every Location. I have three "mantras" for gardening: 1. Feed the Edaphon; 2. Right Plant, Right Place; and 3. Water Deeply and Infrequently. This Encyclopedia covers the "Right Plant, Right Place" mantra. It's all about defining the site and selecting a plant that best fits that site (versus the much more common act of buying a plant and then modifying the site to fit it; or worse, putting the plant in the wrong place). 3,000 different plants listed, many with photographs. My book, "Selecting Plants for Pacific Northwest Gardens," covers many more plants albeit only for the Pacific Northwest and it’s not illustrated. 

AHS Encyclopedia of Gardening Techniques. Step-by-steps with a ton of clear illustrations. Covers pruning, seed sowing, watering, propagating, planting, and pretty much everything else. 

Botany for Gardeners, Fourth Edition: An Introduction to the Science of Plants. For gardeners who want to get their geek on. My book, "Back to the NEW Basics," went scientific, also, but in a different way; I intentionally avoided getting into the details of how plants work. So this makes the perfect companion book.

Dirr's Encyclopedia of Trees and Shrubs. The most comprehensive visual reference, covering more than 3700 species and cultivars. With details on identification, planting, and care.

The Hidden Life of Trees: The Illustrated Edition (David Suzuki Institute version shown on left). My review is based on the original, UN-illustrated edition (shown on right). Twas this book that got me most excited about soil biology (something I already had packed in my brain but so far back, I couldn't easily connect it to the soil on my hands). Never mind the author's anthropomorphizing, he makes such analogies to better connect the reader to the living connections within soil. Trees don't "talk." But they are definitely "wired" within their greater world. My edition had no pictures; for me, those might have been a distraction. I appreciate, though, that many book readers find additional info in pictures. Speaking of "pictures," this book was made into a movie (2020).

And, of course, my own books…

​Step-by-step "CLASSES" —
​pdf versions of PowerPoint Presentations (“slide shows”). Self-operated format — so you can “rewind,” go slowly for note-taking, or just take your time and savor each slide.

Download pdf — Seeds: Basics of Sowing