Viviparus
/vih-VIP-a-rus/🏷️ Taxonomy●●● Advanced
Also known as: vivipara, viviparum
A reproductive epithet describing a plant that produces live, ready-to-grow plantlets — either in the flower head instead of seeds, in the leaf axils, or on the tips of leaves — rather than going through the usual dormant seed stage. Viviparous plants can colonise new ground very efficiently. Appears as viviparus (masculine), vivipara (feminine), or viviparum (neuter).
Etymology
From Latin vivus (alive, living) + parere (to produce, to give birth), meaning "bringing forth live young."
Example
“Poa vivipara (viviparous meadow-grass) replaces its florets with tiny plantlets, and Saxifraga cernua produces bulbils in place of flowers — both vivipary strategies that bypass the seed stage entirely.”