Word of the Day:
epiphyte
What It Means
A plant that grows on another, using it for physical support but obtaining no nutrients from it and neither causing damage nor offering benefit.
A fungus that grows on a plant but does not feed upon it saprotrophically (an epiphytic fungus). (The science of detecting and studying any such symbiosis as may be involved in this relationship is still developing.)
Epiphyte in Context
“The nature of the surface of a plant also determines the number and sort of Epiphytes which lodge on it.”
Did You Know?
From Ancient Greek ἐπιφύτον (epiphúton, “one [plant] that grows upon another plant”), from ἐπί (epí, “on top of”) + φυτόν (phutón, “plant”), via epi- (“above, over”) + -phyte (“plant”).
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: epiphyte (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the word and reformatted its meaning, examples and origin.
Cite this entry: “epiphyte.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/epiphyte. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.
