Ruderal

adj, noun

adj, noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    Any plant growing in rubbish or very poor soil
  2. 2
    A plant tending to volunteer in disturbed soil.
Adjective
  1. 1
    That grows in rubbish or poor soil

    "Rafinesque perfected his variant of this honorable philosophy while botanizing in the literal backyards of my childhood, examining ruderal plants I've known all my life, and so I have appropriated it from him, with minor tweaks."

Synonyms

All synonyms
agrestic

Example

More examples

"Rafinesque perfected his variant of this honorable philosophy while botanizing in the literal backyards of my childhood, examining ruderal plants I've known all my life, and so I have appropriated it from him, with minor tweaks."

Etymology

Borrowed from New Latin rūderālis, from Latin rūdus (“rubble”).

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