The Pictionary
Botanical words from Lucy Lavender and the Topiary City, illustrated and explained. If you’re reading the eBook, these entries are hyperlinked from the text — tap a plant name to see it here, then return straight to your page.
From the Book
The acorn (or oak nut) is the nut of the oaks. Sometimes birds, rodents, and mammals like to feed on them.
The artichoke is a thistle. The heart of the artichoke can be eaten.
The arum lily is a poisonous plant with white funnel shaped flowers and arrow shaped leaves.
A vegetable with a long stem. The tip has overlapping scales like the artichoke.
Also known as ‘naked ladies’, with long leafless stems.
Grows in a clump. Its beak-like sheaths produce flowers that look like birds.
Also known as the ‘dragon arum’. It has an unpleasant smell like a rotting carcass!
Grows in water. It has creeping roots, pretty flowers, and is also a herb.
A low growing shrub that can ascend trees and drape over other plants.
Grow on the Brazil nut tree. The fruit looks like a coconut, and inside, nuts are packed like an orange.
Or box, a slow growing evergreen shrub used for low hedges and topiary.
Or bottle gourd, a vine grown for its fruit, which can be eaten as a vegetable or dried and used as a bottle.
Has pink, white, red, and purple flowers. Grows well in rock gardens or garden borders.
Or bellflowers, producing huge spikes of flowers in blue, mauve, purple or white.
Has feathery leaves like the carrot plant. Its seeds smell like fennel and are used as a spice.
A thistle-like plant and variant of the Globe artichoke.
A vegetable grown from seed. The white head can be broken into florets and eaten.
Or agave, only occasionally flowers, but when it does, its tall spike can reach 8 metres.
The flower of the cherry tree.
Or maize, a tall plant with an ear containing seeds or kernels.
Newly Added
Definitions below are drafted for now.
A shrub known for its distinctive drooping, bell-shaped flowers in shades of pink, purple and red.
A sweet fruit that grows on the fig tree, often eaten fresh or dried.
Also called aubergine, a purple-skinned vegetable that grows on a flowering shrub.
A low-growing herb in the mint family, known for its strong minty scent.
A fast-growing summer squash, usually dark green, harvested while still young and tender.
A large family of flowering plants prized for their intricate, often exotic-looking blooms.
An Australian native tree, covered in fluffy yellow flowers in spring; the floral emblem of Australia.
Still to Come
These plants also appear in Lucy’s world. Full definitions are being added by J.A. MacCulloch — check back soon.
