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:
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:
The main root of a tree or plant.