Simon Cole
Member
The terms are mutually inclusive, so you might have an individual or a community that for example is both a rheophyte and a lithophyte, depending on where it is described growing. You can then alter the term to both rheophytic and lithophytic if it has a tendency to prefer growing in those locations. If you had a rheophytic community including equal numbers of lithophytes, saprophytes and hygrophytes (damp-soil plants) from the same species, then describing it would take longer. In those circumstances it is reasonable to choose whatever term you prefer because there is equal prevalence. Where a significantly higher populations of the same species are found in locations different to the term assigned, then this can be viewed to some extent as unambiguous and misleading, so it helps to have a balanced view based upon observations. These terms are more applicable to describing the natural environment. To qualify that the location was not representative of the community observed then you would have to alter the terms again using an adjective, but this is unusual and you would end up with terms like macrophytical (particular to plants that like to grow large). You could also alter terms to qualify that the location where the plant grew had a distinct function using an adverb, and it is from this we get terms like saprophytically (events particular to plants that like growing on dead wood), but in those cases you would still have to link the adverb to a verb, so you might end up with hyphenated terms like saprophytically-grown. The term describing the most prevalent location for all three plants that you listed would be something like rheophytes (plants that live in fast moving water) or hydrophytes (plants that adapt to living under water). A better way to classify them is to use the term to qualify how they adapt to the conditions. Obviously, if they have a rhizome and attach to a solid surface to anchor then they would be rhizomal rheophytes. How about hydrophytic rhizomal rheophytes. It would seem that the rh-sound is less favourable in modern English and it has been dying out for quite some time and it is things like this that mean people have a preference for easy pronunciations. Hopefully my thoughts here are not too incorrect or annoying.Then, our Buce, Anubias and Ferns can be classed as all three?
- moderators please feel free to move this conversation to the relevant thread if we have one, or you can find it. Sorry everyone else
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