Every term on the site

Nine terms in three groups, each one listed with the number of heard spellings collected under it. The count is a rough measure of how far a word drifts between the ear and the page.

Floral whorls

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

• 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

• androecium

  The androecium is all the stamens of a flower taken together, filament and anther, the pollen-bearing half of the flower.

  13 heard spellings

• perianth

  The perianth is the outer envelope of a flower, calyx and corolla together, sepals and petals counted as one structure. Where the two are alike, as in a tulip, the parts are called tepals.

  8 heard spellings

Flower arrangement

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

• inflorescence

  An inflorescence is the whole flowering shoot: the arrangement of flowers on their stalks together with the axis that carries them. A spike, an umbel, a corymb and a thyrse are all inflorescences.

  11 heard spellings

• thyrse

  A thyrse is a compound inflorescence with an indeterminate main axis and determinate side branches, so the tip goes on growing while the laterals finish flowering. Lilac and horse chestnut carry thyrses. The longer form thyrsus is used too.

  7 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

Ovule and seed

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

• micropyle

  The micropyle is the tiny opening in the coats of an ovule through which the pollen tube enters. It survives in the seed as a minute pore, and it is usually where the radicle pushes out at germination.

  5 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

• chalaza

  The chalaza is the base of an ovule, where the stalk, the coats and the nucellus all run together. It sits opposite the micropyle. In a bird's egg the same word names the twisted strands that hold the yolk in place.

  8 heard spellings