LIANA: A climbing and twining, usually woody, plant found mostly in tropical rainforests, which may climb to the level of the tree canopy. Also liane.
LID: The cap of a box-like seed capsule.
LIGHT SOIL: A term used to indicate a sandy or coarse-textured soil that drains rapidly. It also may lack important plant nutrients.
LIGNEOUS: Consisting of or resembling wood; woody, as distinguished from herbaceous.
LIGNESCENT: Tending to be or become ligneous or woody; somewhat woody.
LIGNIFY: To become wood or woody.
LIGNIPERDOUS: Destructive of wood.
LIGNUM: Woody tissue, as contrasted with soft tissue or with bark.
LIGULATE: 1. Strap-shaped, such as a corolla, leaf, or petal. 2. Furnished with ligule, as a ligulate grass.
LIGULE: A strap-shaped plant part; the blade formed by the corolla in some or all the florets of many members of the daisy family, Compositae. The strap-shaped part that sticks up from the top of the sheath in many grasses, palms, and some other plants.
LIGULIFLOROUS: Having heads composed exclusively of strap-shaped florets.
LIMB: 1. A primary branch of a tree. 2. The expanded, flat portion of a plant part, such as the upper portion of a petal.
LIMBATE: Bordered (i.e. a flower in which one color is edged with another color).
LIME: Compounds of calcium (ground limestone-calcium carbonate, hydrate limestone-calcium hydroxide, or burnt lime-calcium oxide/CaO). The amount of lime in the soil determines whether it is acid, neutral or alkaline. Limestone that is worked into the soil raises the pH from an acid pH to one that is alkaline. When lime is dug into stiff or clayey soil, it tends to make it friable and more easily worked. On the other hand, loose, sandy soil that dries up quickly is made more compact and retentive of moisture by the addition of lime. Many diseases, such as club root and Clover sickness, come from the soil and attack certain crops; lime prevents some of these diseases. Furthermore, lime is distasteful, if not actually harmful, to some soil pests, such as slugs, wireworms and leatherjackets.
LIME REQUIREMENT: The amount of standard ground limestone required to bring a layer of an acre of acid soil (6.6 pH) to some specific lesser degree of acidity. Expressed in tons per acre of nearly pure limestone.
LIME SULFUR: A caustic pesticide made from calcium polysulfide. Usually used as a dormant spray to control various diseases, such as leaf spot, peach leaf curl, and powdery mildew. Also effective in controlling mites, scale, and some other insects.
LINEAR: Long and very narrow with parallel sides, such as a linear leaf. Can also be used in combination, as a linear-lanceolate leaf, which is a leaf that is long, narrow and pointed.
LINEATE: Marked with lines. Also lineated, lined.
LINEOLATE: Marked with fine lines. Also lineolated.
LINGY: Abounding in heaths; heathy; heathery.
LIP: 1. One of the parts of a bilabiate (two-lipped) flower. 2. In orchids, it is one of the three petals that has a different shape than the other two. See Labellum.
LITHOPHYTE: A plant that grows on the surface of rocks, getting its nourishment from the air, as some orchids.
LITHOSOL: A shallow soil consisting of imperfectly weathered rock fragments or nearly all barren rock.
LITTORAL: Pertaining to a shore, especially of the sea; growing on or near the shore.
LITUATE: Forked, with the points turned outward.
LITURATE: Spotted.