A name for various plants with leaves or flowers resembling a fox's tongue, such as certain fern fronds or flowering plants.
Compound word from 'fox' and 'tongue,' using descriptive naming common in medieval and Renaissance herbalism where plant features were named after animals or body parts they resembled.
Before scientific names existed, people named plants purely by what they looked like—'foxtongue,' 'dogsbane,' 'goosegrass'—which is why old herbals are like poetry describing nature through everyday objects. These folk names still survive in regional dialects.
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