A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
saprotroph
A saprotroph is an organism that feeds on dead organic matter, breaking it down outside its own body by releasing enzymes into it and then absorbing the products. Most fungi are saprotrophs, and so are a great many bacteria. They are the reason the world is not knee-deep in dead wood and leaves, and between them they release the nutrients everything else is waiting for.
Etymology
The word is Greek for rotten-feeder. It has replaced the older term saprophyte, which is on this site and which means rotten-plant, on the grounds that fungi are not plants and never were, and biology has been correcting the plant-based vocabulary it inherited for a century.