Library / English Dictionary

EPIPHYTE

Pronunciation (US):

(GB):

 I. (noun) 

Sense 1

Meaning:

Plant that derives moisture and nutrients from the air and rain; usually grows on another plant but not parasitic on it

Synonyms:

aerophyte; air plant; epiphyte; epiphytic plant

Classified under:

Nouns denoting plants

Hypernyms ("epiphyte" is a kind of...):

flora; plant; plant life ((botany) a living organism lacking the power of locomotion)

Hyponyms (each of the following is a kind of "epiphyte"):

Clusia insignis; waxflower (epiphytic clusia of British Guiana)

black moss; long moss; old man's beard; Spanish moss; Tillandsia usneoides (dense festoons of greenish-grey hairlike flexuous strands anchored to tree trunks and branches by sparse wiry roots; southeastern United States and West Indies to South America)

aeschynanthus (a plant of the genus Aeschynanthus having somewhat red or orange flowers and seeds having distinctive hairs at base and apex)

hemiepiphyte; semiepiphyte (a plant that is an epiphyte for part of its life)

strangler; strangler tree (an epiphytic vine or tree whose aerial roots extend down the trunk of a supporting tree and coalesce around it eventually strangling the tree)

Derivation:

epiphytic (of or relating to epiphytes)

Credits