Ferns of wall and rock
Small ferns with their roots in a crack. Three genera, all named in Greek, none of them spelled the way it sounds.
- aspleniuma-SPLEE-nee-um
- cheilanthesky-LAN-theez
- woodsiaWOOD-zee-uh
28 recorded spellings
Spelled by ear
Fern names are written in Greek and heard in English.
This dictionary starts from the spelling you typed, not the one you wanted. Somebody says equisetum out loud, you write ekwisetum, and nothing about that is careless: the q really is doing a k and a w at once, and English has no reason to expect a q there at all.
Every page on this site is built the same way. The spelling you heard sits above the spelling on the label, letter against letter, and a filled mark shows each place the two part company.
The groups
Three groups, nine names
Ferns split by where they grow, and the horsetails and clubmosses are not ferns at all. They are older, and their names are harder.
Ferns of the woodland floor
The large ferns of shade and leaf litter, where the name is usually a description of the plant in Greek.
- dryopterisdry-OP-ter-iss
- polypodiumpol-ee-POH-dee-um
- matteucciama-TEW-see-uh
26 recorded spellings
Horsetails, clubmosses and spikemosses
Not ferns. Older than ferns, with the oldest names in the book and the worst spellings.
- equisetumek-wih-SEE-tum
- lycopodiumly-koh-POH-dee-um
- selaginellasel-a-ji-NELL-uh
22 recorded spellings
Anatomy
What is in an entry
Each name carries a plain respelling, the Latin binomial, what the plant actually is, and the reason its letters and its sound disagree. Under it sit the spellings people reach for after hearing it. Those are the pages: one heard spelling each, with the specific letter that went wrong.
Limits
What this is not
Slipped fingers are not the subject. If a spelling could only come from a keyboard rather than from an ear, it is not here. Everything on this site is a spelling somebody could arrive at honestly, in good faith, having only heard the word said once.