Glossary
- Annuals; Plants that bloom, produce seed, and die during the same season.
- Biennials; Plants that need two seasons to get to full maturity.
Sown in early summer in nursery beds, and planted out in there final quarters in Oct / Nov.
- Blind; A plant or shoot that fails to produce flowers or leaves.
- Crown; The bud-like centre of plants such as Paeony, Strawberry or Rhubarb or the top of root-stock of hardy herbaceous plants.
- Disbudding; The removal of the superfluous flower-buds that form below a crown bud allows the plant’s energy to go into a single flower e.g. Chrysanthemums.
- F1 hybrids; Mostly used to refer to annual and vegetable cultivars produced by crossing two stable seed lines that give rise to uniform progeny.
- F2 hybrids; Plants grown from F, hybrids are called F2, hybrids and display much greater variation than their parents.
- Generic hybrids; Plants derived from crosses between two or more genera, indicated by an x before the composite genus name.
- Hardy Annual; Is a plant that passes through all stages of growth in the open without the need for protection.
- Half-Hardy Annuals; Plants that, in their early stages of growth, need protection prior to planting out.
- Humus; Decayed vegetable matter.
- Lateral; A secondary shoot that develops on a main branch.
- Loam; A type of soil/compost produced from turf that has been stacked and allowed to decay over a period of approximately one year.
- Mulch; A layer of manure, lawn cuttings, or bark shreddings laid around trees and plants to conserve moisture in the surrounding soil.
- Offset; Small bulbs attached to parent bulbs or small rooted pieces of hardy plants that are generally detached for propagation.
- Perennnials; are plants that continue to live and increase in the open for several years.
- Phototropism; Is when a plant/s tends to lean towards a light source.
This is brought about by plant cells that contain hormones called 'auxins'
'auxins' accumulate on the shaded side of a plant and cause cell elongation, this cell elongation effectively pushes the plant stem over towards the brighter light source.
- Subsoil; The soil lying below that which is cultivated i.e. the topsoil.
- Suckers; Useless shoots that form on the stock of a tree/shrub that has been budded/grafted.
- Roses; plum and lilac tend to throw suckers freely and should be cut back to origin/source.
- Rose suckers; are thorny, and normally have seven lighter coloured leaflets whereas a true rose leaf has five leaflets.
- Tilth; Is the state/texture of soil that has been broken down to make it suitable for sowing or planting.
- Tap-root; Is the main root of a tree or plant
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