Relating to or characteristic of plants that produce their own food through photosynthesis without needing external nutrients.
From Greek 'auto-' (self) and 'phyte' (plant), with the adjective suffix '-ic'. This scientific term is largely archaic, replaced by 'autotrophic' in modern biology.
The term 'autophytic' is a linguistic time capsule—it shows how scientists once named things very literally, before settling on the Greek-derived 'autotrophic' which is now the standard term!
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