Plant Parts in Bahasa Indonesia

Hi, hi~

This time I want to tell you the Bahasa Indonesia or Indonesian terms for plant parts. 🌱

Now, plants itself is called tanaman, tumbuhan, or flora. By itself, ‘tanam’ means ‘to plant’, whilst ‘tumbuh’ means ‘grow’, and the ‘-an’ is a suffix that can be used to make a non-noun word become a noun. Although the three can be used interchangeably, tanaman implies that the plant is deliberately planted by humans, tumbuhan can grow without any human intervention, while flora is quite formal and has a bit of a…poetic nuance.

Tree is called pohon, while forest and jungle are both only known as hutan. The word rimba can also be applied to jungle, as well as pepohonan, which basically means ‘trees’ (plural) but implies that they are still standing. The trunk of a tree is called batang, though batang can also refer to stem, and the branches is called ranting. Branching, on the other hand, is bercabang, and actually the word cabang can be used to refer to branch though it’s less commonly used. Wood itself is called kayu.

Grass itself is called rumput, with the plural form of rerumputan and meadow is called padang rumput (‘field of grass’). Seaweed is called rumput laut (‘sea grass’) or ganggang laut in Bahasa Indonesia, though weed itself, at least the ones on land, is called gulma or rumput liar (‘wild grass’).  Moss, on the other hand, is lumut (quite similar I suppose).

Seed, like the one that may come out of fruits, is called biji. Once a biji has been cultivated a bit, ‘awakened’ you can say, and can be used to grow the plant from which it came from, it’s called benih. Afterwards, once benih has germinated and sprouted roots, stem, and little leaves but are not yet grown, it is called bibit (you can say it’s a seedling). Below is a picture I found which points out seed parts in Bahasa Indonesia for bean (dicotyledon) and corn (monocotyledon).

Root is akar, though the root vegetables like sweet potato or cassava can be called umbi (umbi-umbian in plural). Leaf is called daun, whilst leaves can be called dedaunan or daun-daun, depending on the context. On the other hand, hay or straw is called jerami.

Next, we’re looking at flower, which is bunga in Bahasa Indonesia. Some people also said kembang, which has Javanese…root (LOL). Puspa also means flower, though this one has Sanskrit origin. Here’s a picture depicting how parts of a flower are said in Bahasa Indonesia:

The honey bees produced after…processing the nectar (nektar) is called madu (‘honey’, though in Indonesia madu isn’t used as an endearment term).

Next comes the fruit, which you might know from reading my previous post is called buah, with buah-buahan as its plural form. The rind of a fruit is called kulit buah (literally means ‘skin of fruit’), and the seed inside them is the dormant biji that can be used to grow more of said plant.

By the way, crop is called hasil panen, which literally translates as ‘harvest yield’. And if you know how some plants has thorns, like in the case of rose and durian, well those thorns are called duri (remember what I said about the suffix ‘-an’ in Bahasa Indonesia and now you know where the name durian came from…).

Lastly, though these are not plant parts, here are some places where plants are grown:

• Pertanian = farm

• Perkebunan = plantation

• Sawah = rice field

  

• Rumah kaca = greenhouse

• Taman (the one where people grow plants on, not like parks which are also taman in Bahasa Indonesia) = garden

That’s all for today! I’ll give a short summary of the terms below, so you can check them easier anytime.

ENGLISH	BAHASA INDONESIA
Branch	Ranting
Flower	Bunga
Fruit	Buah
Grass	Rumput
Plant	Tanaman / tumbuhan
Root	Akar
Seed	Biji
Tree	Pohon
Trunk	Batang
Wood	Kayu

See you next time~