Beijerinckia

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A rod-shaped bacterium that lives in soil and can convert atmospheric nitrogen into usable compounds for plants
2. A type of soil microorganism belonging to the genus that fixes nitrogen through symbiotic or free-living means
3. A bacterium found in soil capable of drawing nitrogen directly from the air and making it available to vegetation

Etymology: Martinus Willem Beijerinck, a Dutch microbiologist working at Delft in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, did much of his work on the microbes that move nitrogen through soil and water. Taxonomists honored him by naming a genus of bacteria after him, following the usual convention of giving a person's name a Latin-style ending. The name is built from the surname "Beijerinck" plus the Latin suffix "-ia," which turns it into a feminine noun that botanists and microbiologists could use in scientific classification. The genus is a member of the group of soil bacteria Beijerinck helped study, and its members can fix atmospheric nitrogen without the need for a host plant, which is part of why his name became attached to them.