Catchflies

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. Wildflowers of the pink family whose sticky stems and hairy parts can trap small insects
2. Plants in the genus Silene, often with sticky bands on their stems that snare crawling insects
3. Sticky-stemmed wild flowers, closely related to campions, that capture insects on their surfaces

Etymology: Catchflies are plants, mostly from the genus Silene and its relatives, whose sticky stems and calyces snare small insects. The name is a plain compound: "catch" and "fly", with the plant's gummy surface doing the work the word describes. Because the name is a transparent pairing of two everyday English words, it needs little more explanation than that. The form "catchflies" is simply the plural of "catchfly", following the regular English rule that a noun ending in "y" after a consonant changes to "ies" in the plural.