Meaning

(botany) A plant which was introduced to an area by humans (or arrived naturally, but from an area in which it was present as a human introduction) and became naturalized before 1500 C.E. (but especially in prehistoric times)..

Example Sentences

[page 126] Archæophytes (Rikli), plants which have occurred constantly with us since pre-historic times, originally, however, growing wild nowhere in the country, field and garden weeds, […] [page 127] Further, the flora of the cultivated areas consists of a very heterogeneous element, e.g., the field weed flora is composed of at least two groups, the true Archæophytes […] and the spontaneous Apophytes […]

Anthropochorous plants are divided into (a) those introduced unintentionally, including ephemerophytes (casuals), epoikophytes (colonists, aliens) and archaeophytes (naturalised plants), and (b) those introduced intentionally, including ergasiphytes (foreign cultivated plants) and ergasiphygophytes (escapes from cultivation).

It may be doubtful whether the three species first mentioned should more properly be regarded as archæophytes, since they also occur outside the actually cultivated soil; […]

N. Eur. an archæophyte, following the cereals, Færoes one place, but here noticed with an interval of 30 years.

Carduus acanthoides […] In Central Bohemia an archeophyte growing in a variety of ruderal habitats (dumps, railroads, construction areas, waste places), in pastures, and abandoned fields.

[A]rcheophytes are adapted to habitat types created early in history, including pastures, fields, and their edges; many of the neophytes, on the other hand, occur predominantly in ruderal, industrial, and urban habitats. […] [T]he proportion of neophytes is much higher in the flora of Berlin than in adjacent non-urban areas, but no difference was found for archeophytes.

The separation between natives and archeophytes relies on a combination of paleobotanical, archeological, ecological, and historical evidence (archeophytes and neophytes are absent from the fossil record in the last glacial period, the late glacial, and the early post-glacial). Archeophytes are often known from archeological evidence to have been present in prehistoric times.

Archaeophytes, or aliens that arrived through man's cultural activity and applied for a residency permit more than 500 years ago, can be accepted but are apologised for. Neophytes, aliens that have had an assisted passage since 1500, are beyond the pale, and never protected. Nevertheless, some of these may be of both cultural value and international conservation concern, like Lady Amherst's pheasant in Bedfordshire, just as much as those threatened archaeophyte weeds.

Word Forms

• archaeophytes
• archæophyte
• archeophyte

Antonyms for archaeophyte

Related Words

When Should You Use Archaeophyte?

Use archaeophyte when its meaning, tone and grammar fit the full sentence. A synonym is not always a direct replacement.

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