|  Gardening
Glossary: A - B
Gardening terms can be difficult to understand
and can make reading books or articles on the subject less
informative than they would be otherwise. When you find
a term you don't understand, look it up in this glossary
which is spread over seven pages to reduce loading time.
Let me know if you come across any term that doesn't appear
here and I will add it.
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Acid:
Soil or compost
with a pH level of less than 7.
Aeration:
Loosening compacted soil to allow air to circulate. It also
applies to lawns when a fork or other implement is used
to stab holes in it, also to allow air in.
Aerial
Roots: Plant roots that grow above ground to absorb
moisture.
Air Layering: Also
called Chinese layering. A way of propagating plants where
a vertical cut is made to form a tongue on a woody stem.
Sphagnum moss is then packed under the tongue and around
it. Then cover the moss with plastic and seal it. Roots
should grow into the moss and then it can be planted normally.
Alkaline:
Soil that has a pH level of about 7 or more.
Alpine:
Usually refers to plants used in rock gardens. They are
plants that grow in rocky, mountainous regions.
Alternate:
Leaves that occur at different levels of a stem, on opposite
sides, instead of in pairs.
Anaerobic:
Bacteria, etc, that occur when there is no oxygen. It happens
sometimes in stagnant ponds or in unhealthy compost heaps
when they get cold and damp.
Annual:
A plant whose entire life cycle, from germination
to making seeds and dying, is completed in one season.
Anther:
The top part of a flower's stamen
where pollen is produced.
Apical:
See terminal.
Aquatic:
Plants that grow in water whether floating or rooted in
a pond or other water.
Asexual
Reproduction: Reproduction without fertilisation,
especially relevant to cuttings and other types of vegetative
reproduction.
Auxins:
A natural or artificial substance controlling the growth
of shoots, roots, etc.
Axil:
The upper angle found between a leaf and stem, or a main
stem and secondary stem, often where a new shoot appears.
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Backfill:
Fill in the hole made for a plant.
Bare Root:
Usually shrubs and trees sold with no soil on their roots.
Bark Ringing:
Taking of a circle to bark from a fruit tree to inhibit
growth but to encourage cropping.
Base Dressing:
Fertiliser or compost put on or dug in to the soil before
planting or sowing.
Bedding Plants:
Plants grown to almost full size and then planted out usually
in summer to make colourful displays.
Bicolour: A
plant with flowers or leaves with two distinctively different
colours.
Biennial:
A plant that goes from germination
to seed bearing and death in two seasons.
Blanch:
Excluding light from a plant to keep it soft, usually for
eating.
Bleed: To
lose sap through a cut or wound.
Blind: Failing
to produce flowers or losing the growing tip of a plant
through injury usually.
Bloom: Either
the flower of a plant or a whitish coating on leaves or
stems.
Bole:
The part of a tree trunk from the ground to the first branch.
Bolt: Plants,
usually vegetables, especially onions, that produce flowers
and seed heads prematurely.
Bonsai:
Refers to either the trees or the method of producing miniature
trees by pruning roots and restricting the size of the container.
Originated in Japan.
Bottom Heat:
Heating plants by subsoil or under bench heating usually
for germination or cuttings.
Bract: A
modified leaf, sometimes protective at the base of a flower.
When it is brightly coloured, it can be mistaken for a flower
petal as in the case of a poinsettia.
Break: A
shoot growing from the axil on a plant.
Bulb: This
is really a modified stem acting as storage for the plant
(that's why you shouldn't cut the foliage back on daffodils
when they stop flowering because it feeds the bulb). A true
bulb is made up of individual, although often tightly packed,
scales. The term bulb is also applied wrongly to tubers
and rhizomes.
Bulb Fibre:
Special compost formulated for growing bulbs like hyacinths
and narcissus.
Bulbil:
A tiny bulblike structure, often found in a leaf axil.
Bulblet:
A developing bulb formed on a mature bulb.
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