The Quiet Branches

While I work on my next post about plant science I thought I’d inject a short post.

There aren’t many poetic/humorous/rich collective nouns for plants that aren’t generic.

There are fields, forests, paddies, riparian zones, stands, copses, bouquets, bunches, beds, and cornucopias. These are pretty generic, though.

The animal world gets a crash or rhinos, a smack of jellyfish, and parliaments of owls (note: not all collective animal nouns are good…a blessing of unicorns?! I say nay to that).

I’ll toss out a few here, and anyone can add their own ideas via social media or in the comments.

A spike of cacti

A rarity of orchids

A clone of aspen

A tassel of corn

An agar of Arabidopsis

This is purely an exercise in fun. But would love to hear what readers come up with.

Update. So far from comments and social media we have

Ray Eckhart in a comment:

A reservoir of succulents,

a horde of Hostas (I’ll have to look up this plant later),

a henge of Prunus (aka stoneftruit).

More from Eckhart:

A majesty of oaks
A gloom of yews
An advance of birches
A canvas of maples
A mess of alders
A hell of laurels (I believe this is a real one)
A chamber of boxwoods
A brothel of hydrangeas

From Terry Wheeler in comments:

A drift of dandelions
A droop of peonies
A trembling of aspens
A towering of redwoods
A vincent of sunflowers
A flurry of cottongrass

And from Twitter:

(also proposed: A juggernaut of bindweed).

As you keep suggesting them, I’ll keep updating this post.

One I thought of this morning: A fatality of nightshade.