Heliotropism

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    The property of some plants of turning under the influence of light; either positively (towards the light) or negatively (away from the light). countable, uncountable

    "As soon as the faintest ray of light reaches a seedling, heliotropism will guide it through any crack in the soil, or through an entangled mass of overlying vegetation; […]"

  2. 2
    an orienting response to the sun wordnet

Example

More examples

"As soon as the faintest ray of light reaches a seedling, heliotropism will guide it through any crack in the soil, or through an entangled mass of overlying vegetation; […]"

Etymology

From helio- + -tropism.

Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.