"Monkey" is an animal. "Fern" is a plant. Unfortunately, "monkeyfern" is not an English word.

Find a more suitable animal and plant for the job.

There are many words that can be the combination of a animal+plant. Most of these words are types of plants (or the fruit of a plant) with the "animal" part compounded as a modifier due to a relationship the animal has with the plant (or fruit) or just as a descriptive element; or, the "animal" part may simply be a reference to the animal.

Following is a partial list of the "compounded" animal+plant words:
birdlime, buckbean, horseapple, horsebean, bayberry, bearberry, coralberry, cowberry, crakeberry, crowberry, deerberry, dogberry, foxberry, gooseberry, grouseberry, hagberry, hindberry, lingberry, nannyberry, partridgeberry, salmonberry, shadberry, sheepberry, snakeberry, skunkbush, chiggerflower, cuckooflower, crowflower, snailflower, spiderflower, swanflower, shadflower, crabgrass, eelgrass, goosegrass, sparrowgrass, chickpea, cowpea, muskmelon, horsemint, horseradish, hogweed, horseweed, pigweed, buckwheat, cowwheat, bearwood, beefwood, coralwood, dogwood, eaglewood, elkwood, gopherwood, harewood, horsewood, leopardwood, moosewood, possumwood, rabbitwood, snakewood, zebrawood, adderwort, bullwort, fleawort, hartwort, lousewort, scorpionwort, sparrowwort, spiderwort, swallowwort


The following are where the animal+plant are combined but not "compounded", and thus, in my opinion, more suitable:

Cathay (an archaic name for China) - cat (a feline mammal) + hay (grass or plant, usually cut, dried and used as fodder);
coothay (a striped satin made in India) - coot (slaty-black slow-flying bird resembling a duck) + hay; and,
mulierose (fond of woman) - mulie (a variant spelling of muley: a usually horned animal without horns) + rose (a plant of the genus Rosa)

Posted by Dej Mar on 2008-03-22 05:03:52