the.com/heliotrope
A flower that stalks the sun across the sky, and the purple named after its devotion.
means A plant with small fragrant purple flowers that turn to track the sun, and also the pinkish-purple color named after it.
from From Greek hēlios 'sun' plus tropē 'turning' — the same tropē that gives us 'trope.' The Greeks used the word for any plant that seemed to follow the sun's path, long before it settled on today's specific flower, and the color name followed later, borrowed from the blossom's own purple.
- name origin
- Greek for sun-turner, helios plus trope
- actual behavior
- only seedlings track sun, mature stems stop moving
- color link
- named for the fragrant purple flowered plant itself
- unrelated gem
- bloodstone was also once called heliotrope, confusingly