Alien Plant Name Generator

Alien plants get named the same way Earth plants did: by whoever met them first. Colonists and survey crews coin blunt folk names that describe what the thing does or what it nearly did to them, which is why Screaming Fern, Knifegrass, Tripwire Creeper and Miner's Warning sound like they came out of a frontier logbook rather than a marketing deck. Xenobotanists follow with Latin-flavored binomials (Pyrothrix vesuvia, Cryophyllum tenebris) that encode a trait and a place. And if the planet already has natives, the flora carries their words, like Zhaari Bloom or Vresk'thal, usually with an English plant-type tacked on by translators.

The trick to a convincing alien plant is to break one rule of Earth botany and keep the rest. A reed that hums, a lichen that eats iron, a lily that opens only during eclipses: each name should point at that single strangeness (Pulse Orchid, Static Moss, Eclipse Fern) so readers picture it instantly. Tying a plant to its world also helps, either by prefix (Veldran Glasswort, Tharsis Lantern Moss) or by a colony name (Coldharbor Kelp).

Mix registers within one setting. A survey report, a settler's kitchen and an alien elder would never call the same plant by the same name, and letting all three coexist makes your world feel inhabited.