Ferns of the woodland floor
polypodium
say pol-ee-POH-dee-um
Polypodium vulgare
Common polypody, the fern of walls, banks and mossy branches. Five syllables with the stress in the middle, and the two on either side of it collapse.
What it is
The plant
Polypodium vulgare spreads by a green scaly rhizome that runs along the surface rather than rooting deep, which is why it can live on a wall top or along the limb of an old oak. The fronds are simple and leathery, cut into blunt lobes, and the spore clusters on the underside are round, naked and bright orange when ripe.
Why
Why the letters and the sound disagree
Greek poly, many, and podion, a little foot. The fern creeps rather than sits, and where each year's frond has broken off the rhizome it leaves a rounded scar, so the stem ends up looking like a line of small feet. Latin turned podion into podium, and that is the whole of the word's ending: not a botanical suffix but an ordinary Latin noun.
Recorded
Spellings people arrive at
- poliepodeumtwo changes at oncepolypodium.
- pollypodiuma doubled consonantOne l.
- polipodeumtwo changes at onceThe spelling is polypodium.
- polipodumtwo changes at oncepolypodium, with a y and an i.
- poliepodiumy doing the work of iNo: polypodium.
- polipodiumy doing the work of ipolypodium. The second letter of the word is y.
- polyp odiumheard as two wordsOne word: polypodium.
- polypodiaman unstressed vowel-ium.
- polypodumthe endingpolypodium keeps its i.
- polypodeumthe endingThe word ends in -ium.
- poleepodiumtwo changes at onceBecause the prefix really is said pol-ee. It is written poly.
- polypoddiuma doubled consonantNeither. Nothing in polypodium is doubled.
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