Fantasy Plant Name Generator

The best fantasy plant names sound like they were coined by farmers, herbalists and hedge-witches, not by marketing departments. Real English folk names are the model: wolfsbane, feverfew, shepherd's purse, monk's hood, lady's mantle, hangman's ivy. Each one is either a use (feverfew, knitbone), a resemblance (adder's tongue, witch's butter), a warning (wolfsbane, deathcap) or a bit of folklore (fairy's bonnet). Tolkien's kingsfoil, also called athelas, follows exactly this pattern: a plain compound name for common folk and an elvish name for the learned.

So a convincing fictional flora needs several registers. Compound names built from two ordinary words (bloodmoss, emberleaf, frostbloom) sound like what a peasant would call a plant. Possessive names (Troll's Beard, Widow's Lace, Dragon's Tongue) sound like folk descriptions of shape or danger. Names ending in -wort, -cress, -bane, -cap or -bell borrow the actual suffixes of English herb names, which is why Rimewort and Shriekcap read as real. A few longer, botanical-sounding names for the scholar or alchemist round it out.

The list covers healing herbs, poisons, magical reagents, trees, fungi and a few water and desert plants, so you can stock a whole potion-crafting system or a druid's satchel from one place.