All the plants that grow in a particular region. The animals of a region are called its fauna.
In Roman mythology, the Goddess of fertility was a manifestation of the divinity of springtime; the deity and symbol of flowers and nature. Her name was Flora, and it is from her name that we derived the modern usage of this noun.
In contemporary practice, flora is a biological term denoting the diverse spectrum of plant life that thrives in a particular geographical region or time period. Flora can also refer to a type of botanical publication cataloguing the different flowers and plant life in a region, documenting and describing an ecosystem with illustrations, technical analyses, and diagnostic keys. These can be used to catalogue by continent, by country, or by region. In a flora of Japan, for example, you might expect to see the cherry blossom genus, or prunus serrulata, included alongside the magnolia liliiflora, or Japanese magnolia. Notice the last two syllables on that last Latin word. The word flora cannot be removed from beautiful horticultural landscapes.
A popular and well-known phrase is ‘flora and fauna’. While flora refers to plant life, fauna is used to denote the animal life of a given region. ‘Flora and fauna’ is a phrase that attempts to encapsulate the assortment of all living creatures in the natural world.
flora
all the plants that grow in a particular region. The animals of a region are called its fauna.
