The anatomy of a flower, spelled properly

This is a dictionary for the moment just after somebody says a word out loud. Flower anatomy is full of Greek compounds that were respelled by Latin scribes and are now pronounced by English speakers, and the three layers do not agree with one another.

Gynoecium sounds like it begins with a j. Corymb ends in a letter almost nobody says. Funiculus starts with fyoo. Every page here takes one spelling a listener could reasonably arrive at, gives the spelling botany actually uses, and says which letter is doing the lying.

Three that catch almost everybody

• gynoecium

  The gynoecium is every carpel in a flower counted as one unit: stigma, style and ovary, the part that receives pollen and ripens into fruit. Its opposite number is the androecium.

  15 heard spellings

• corymb

  A corymb is a flat-topped flower cluster. The lower stalks are longer than the upper ones, so the flowers all open at roughly the same height. Yarrow and candytuft are corymbs.

  6 heard spellings

• funiculus

  The funiculus is the stalk that joins an ovule, and later the seed, to the placenta inside the ovary. When the seed comes away it leaves a scar called the hilum, the mark on the flat side of a broad bean.

  8 heard spellings

Where the terms sit

• Floral whorls

  The rings a flower is built from, and the collective nouns botany gives them.

  3 terms, 36 spellings

• Flower arrangement

  Words for the shape a cluster of flowers takes on the stem.

  3 terms, 24 spellings

• Ovule and seed

  Three points on one small body, and three ways to mishear them.

  3 terms, 21 spellings