Phytographical

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. Concerning the investigation and documentation of plant types and their environmental settings
2. Relating to the analysis and representation of plant distributions and their ecological relationships
3. Having to do with the study and depiction of various plant species along with their respective habitats and environmental conditions

Etymology: "Phytographical" is built from two Greek elements: "phyton," meaning "plant," and "graphein," meaning "to write" or "to describe." The first element, "phyto-," turns up in a whole family of scientific words, such as phytoplankton and phytochemistry, while "-graphical" is the adjective ending that comes from "graphic," so the word literally describes plants in the manner of writing about them. Its sense of "about plant geography" is a specialised refinement of that general meaning. The word has a close relative in French, "phytographique," and English seems to have formed its adjective alongside that French model. Its sense is a modern scientific one: plant description and the mapping of where species grow belong to the nineteenth-century science of botany, so the word is a learned coinage rather than something inherited from the ancient Greeks, who had no use for a term combining these exact elements.