Glossary of Regenerative Gardening Terms

Gardening can get pretty technical at times, and you'll find a number of words and terms peppered around this site which you may be unfamiliar with.

To help, I've included this glossary of terms as a way to acquaint yourself with the wonderful world of regenerative gardening.

All definitions come directly from Merriam-Webster, Oxford English Dictionary, or Wikipedia unless otherwise noted. All credit goes to these websites.

Regenerative Gardening Terms:

• Agochoric - Plants which have been spread accidentally through transport
• Agroecology - The academic discipline that studies ecological processes applied to agricultural production systems. Bringing ecological principles to bear can suggest new management approaches in agroecosystems.
• Agroecosystems - The ecosystems supporting the food production systems in farms and gardens.
• Allelopathic - Plants which produce a chemical deterrent to prevent other plants from establishing themselves nearby. Often a toxic root exudate.
• Angiosperm - Seed-producing plants which have flowers. These are differentiated from the other seed-producing plants, gymnosperms, which do not have flowers.
• Anthocyanin - Water-soluble vacuolar pigments that, depending on their pH, may appear red, purple, blue, or black.
• Auxins - A class of plant hormones (or plant-growth regulators) with some morphogen-like characteristics. Auxins play a cardinal role in coordination of many growth and behavioral processes in plant life cycles and are essential for plant body development.
• Biosequestration - The capture and storage of the atmospheric greenhouse gas carbon dioxide by continual or enhanced biological processes.
• Bolt (to flower) - When an angiosperm begins its flowering and shows its inflorescence and is subsequently pollinated and goes to seed.
• Chill Hours - The number of hours that a tree spends between 32F and 45F ( 0C and 7.2C ) per year. With most fruit and nut trees, citrus excluded, a certain number of chill hours is required every year for flowering & fruiting.
• Chlorophyll - The photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll captures the energy from sunlight, converts it, and stores it in the energy-storage molecules ATP and NADPH while freeing oxygen from water in the cells.
• Chloroplast - A type of membrane-bound organelle known as a plastid that conducts photosynthesis mostly in plant and algal cells.
• Cold Stratification - See Vernalization
• Cold Treatment - See Vernalization
• Cotyledon - The embryonic leaf in seed-bearing plants, one or more of which are the first to appear from a germinating seed.
• Determinate - Plants which stop growing once a pre-determined structure has formed. This contrasts with indeterminate, which grow until an external factor such as heat or frost kill them.
• Dicotyledonous ("dicots") - Plant species with two cotyledons
• Dioecious - Plants which have distinct unisexual individuals. Dioecious plants contain only either male or female reproductive structures in their flowers, not both. Flowers of dioecious plants are often referred to as "imperfect flowers"
• Endemic - (of an organism) native and restricted to a specific place or region.
• Espalier Tree - Fruit trees grown on espalier forms in order to spread them wide and thin, create privacy, or to fit in a confined space.
• Etiolation - A process in flowering plants grown in partial or complete absence of light. It is characterized by long, weak stems; smaller leaves due to longer internodes; and a pale yellow color (chlorosis).
• Flocculate - To bind together, as in soil aggregates.
• Forb - Flowering plants (angiosperms) which do not have a woody stem, such as grasses.
• Gymnosperms - Seed-producing plants which do not have flowers. These are differentiated from the other seed-producing plants, angiosperms, which do have flowers.
• Indeterminate - Plants which grow until an external factor such as heat or frost kill them. This contrasts with determinate, which stop growing once a pre-determined structure has formed.
• Inflorescence - The reproductive structure of a plant which contains groups or clusters of flowers arranged on a main axis or stem. This structure is generally revealed as a plant bolts to flower.
• Internodes - The space between plant nodes
• Korean Natural Farming - A sustainable system developed by Master Han Kyu Cho of the Janong Natural Farming Institute in South Korea
• Laminae - Leaf blade, such as in the poaceae family (grasses)
• Monocotyledonous ("monocots") - Plant species with one cotyledon
• Monoecious - Plants which do not have distinct unisexual individuals. Monoecious plants contain both male and female flowers on the same plant. Flowers of monoecious plants are often referred to as "perfect flowers". Some monoecious plants such as cannabis may become dioecious under stressful conditions in order to self-pollinate.
• Morphogen - A signaling molecule that acts directly on cells to produce specific cellular responses depending on its local concentration.
• Nodes - The points of attachment for leaves and can hold one or more leaves.
• Petiole - Leaf stalk
• Phloem - The living tissue in vascular plants that transports the soluble organic compounds made during photosynthesis and known as photosynthates, in particular the sugar sucrose, to the rest of the plant.
• Photosynthesis - A biological process used by many cellular organisms to convert light energy into chemical energy, which is stored in organic compounds that can later be metabolized through cellular respiration to fuel the organism's activities
• Phyllotaxis - The arrangement of leaves on a plant. Common arrangements include: opposite, spiral, whorled, repeating spiral, distichous, and more
• Progenitor - An organism from which another originates; an ancestor or parent
• Regenerative Agriculture - An approach to agriculture which focuses on soil improvement and remediation, carbon sequestration, microbiome and soil health, increased biodiversity, improving water infiltration and retention, and increasing resilience to climate change
• Seedbank - This refers to seeds which have built up in your soil or garden over time and sprout on their own when the season is right. Letting veggies go to seed and drop will help build up a good seedbank, while letting weeds go to seed will build up a negative Swedbank in your soil. Sometimes also refers to a business which stores and distributes seeds.
• Stipules - The structures on both sides of the petiole base
• Skotomorphogenesis - The development of seedlings in the dark (which leads to etiolated seedlings)
• Umbels - Flower structures (inflorescence) which resemble umbrellas with a number of stalks extending outward from a central point.
• Umbellifers - These are species of flowering plants (angiosperms) which flower on umbels. This is a common distinguishing trait of the apiaceae family.
• Vernalization - Whether induced naturally outdoors during winter or artificially replicated in a refrigerator, vernalization is the exposure to enough cold for a long enough period that seeds "think" they've gone through winter.
• Xylem - One of the two types of transport tissue in vascular plants, the other being phloem. The basic function of the xylem is to transport water from roots to stems and leaves, but it also transports nutrients.