Perigyny

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The condition or arrangement concerning female parts within a plant, especially referring to the structure around the ovary in flowers
2. A botanical term describing how female reproductive organs are positioned or enclosed in flowering plants
3. The characteristic position or presence of female reproductive components in the anatomy of certain plants

Etymology: Perigyny is a botanical term for a flower in which the sepals, petals and stamens grow from a rim or cup around the ovary, rather than from beneath it. The word is built from Greek: "peri" meaning "around" and "gyne" meaning "woman" or, in botany, "pistil" or female organ, so the literal sense is "around the female part." It is a modern scientific coinage, formed from classical Greek roots, rather than a term used by the ancient Greeks themselves. The word belongs to a family of related terms that botanists use to describe where a flower's parts sit relative to the ovary. Perigyny is set beside "hypogyny," where the parts sit below the ovary, and "epigyny," where they sit above it. The three words share the same "-gyny" ending and differ only in their prefixes, which makes the group easy to remember once the Greek prefixes are known: "hypo" (under), "peri" (around), and "epi" (upon).