Category
Flower arrangement
Words for the shape a cluster of flowers takes on the stem.
Flowers rarely sit on a stem one at a time. They come in spikes, heads, umbels, panicles and racemes, and the branching pattern is one of the more reliable ways of telling one plant family from another.
The names for those patterns are mostly Greek nouns for clusters and staffs, borrowed whole and barely altered. They arrive in English carrying silent letters and vowels that no longer match their sound.
3 terms in this group
- 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