Botanical Words Alphabetical List - DE

DEADHEADING: The removal of dead flowers or flower heads.

DEALKALIZATION: The removal of exchangeable sodium from the soil by a process of leaching or chemically treating the soil.

DECAYED ORGANIC MATTER: Decomposed plant or animal matter, used to improve the soil.

DECIDUOUS: Losing its leaves annually at the end of the growing season; semi-deciduous plants lose only some leaves.

DECLINATE: Bent or curved downward or forward.

DECOMPOSE: To release chemicals from organic matter by means of bacterial action.

DECOMPOUND: Divided into a number of compound divisions, such as a leaf divided into leaflets or a cluster of flowers divided into numerous branchlets.

DECUMBENT: Reclining with the tips ascending; a plant that has its base lying on the ground and a stem that grows upward.

DECURRENT: Extending down the stem (i.e. a leaf with a base extending downward along the stem).

DECUSSATE: Arranged in pairs alternately crossing each other at right angles.

DEEP PERCOLATION: The downward movement of water into the soil beyond the reach of a plant's roots.

DEEP SOIL: Soil that is deeper than 40 inches and continues until it becomes rock or another strongly contrasting material.

DEFLEXED: Bent backward or downward.

DEFLOCCULATE: To break up the soil into individual particles.

DEFLUENT: Running downward; decurrent.

DEFLUVIUM: A falling off, such as the bark of a tree, from disease.

DEFOIL: To strip a plant of leaves.

DEFOLIATE: To deprive of foliage; to cut or pick the leaves of a plant, especially too early.

DEFOLIATION: The loss of leaves (for instance, from the attack of insects); specifically, the dropping of leaves in autumn.

DEFOLIATOR: That which defoliates or strips of growth; specifically, in entomology, any insect that destroys the foliage of trees.

DEFOREST: To deprive of forests; to cut down and clear away forests.

DEFORESTATION: The act of cutting down and clearing away forests of a region or stretch of land.

DEGRADATION: The change of one kind of soil to a more highly leached soil.

DEHISCE: To open (i.e. the seed capsules or pods of plants).

DEHISCENCE: The bursting open of a pod or capsule to release the seeds or of an anther to release pollen.

DEHISCENT: Opening, such as the seedpod of a plant.

DEHYDRATION: The loss of water.

DELTOID: Triangular and attached to the stem at the wide end, such as a deltoid leaf.

DENDROID: Tree-like; dendriform; arborescent; branching like a tree.

DENITRIFICATION: The process by which bacterial action reduces nitrates in the soil to ammonia or free nitrogen that can escape into the air.

DENSHIRE: To improve land by burning piles of earth, turf, and stubble and then spreading the ashes over the ground as compost. Also densher.

DENTATE: Toothed with sharp teeth directed outward as in a dentate leaf, or having tooth-like projections, such as a dentate root.

DENTICULATE: Minutely dentate.

DEPRESSED: Flattened from above.

DESALINIZATION: The removal of salts from saline soil.

DESERT SOIL: Light-colored surface soil that develops in warm- to cool-arid climates.

DESILTING AREA: An area used to remove sediment from flowing water.

DESORPTION: The removal of absorbed materials from surfaces.

DETAILED SOIL MAP: A map showing the different classifications of soil in a designated area.

DEXTRORSE: Twining spirally upward around an axis, as in the hop or morning glory.

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