Antoine Volodine’s Radiant Terminus (2014, translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman, 2017) names dozens of plants growing on its irradiated steppe. A few are real. Most are not. The list below is an exercise in botanical glossolalia: French folk-naming, Russian loanwords, mock-Latin coinages, and invented hagiography.
The real ones
A few genuine herbs to establish credibility, so that the rest of the list reads as belonging to the same botanical register. Absinthe is the bitter wormwood.
savory
sage
white sage
absinthe
mint
The Slavic and Siberian-sounding
These sound borrowed from Russian.
kvoina
iglitsa
chugda
majdahar
ashrangs
bouralayans
zabakulians
lovushkas / Lovushkas-du-savatier
The mock-French folk names
The most beautiful and most clearly fabricated. French popular botany is full of compound names.
Jeanne-of-the-Communists
Marche-sept-lieues (seven-league-march)
mère-du-lépreux (leper’s-mother)
dame-exquises
midnight Jeannes
Damsels-in-flight
prance-the-ruins
pugnaise-des-errants (the wanderers’ bedbug-flower)
dangue-à-clochettes (little-bells-dangue)
folle-en-jouissem
quick-bleeds
old-captives
smallglory captives
fox barrens
four-o’clock beauties
racines-rieuses (laughing roots)
great ogronts
Vornies-cinq-misères
caincers
mauvegarde
caped mudbeaks
willow benaises
Chiennelaines (bitch-wools)
deadchive plumes
twistsprouts
fine-brousse
huckster terbabary / ravive terbabary
bushes of gourgoule-des-pauvres
aldousses
Saint-Valiyans
Valiyan-harelips
Grimes-amerses
Rasping-odile-des-foins
grand-odilie
lancelottes
The pseudo-Latin and pseudo-scientific coinages
The densest and most inventive band. Some surface near real plant suffixes used for French plant and flower names. Some are portmanteaux. Some are pure phonetic invention.
septentrines
epernielle
saquebrille
lucemingot
regrignelle
molle-guillotes
malveines
pituitaines
doroglosses
solivaines (rogue and aromatic)
argamanche shrubs
torchpotils
masquerats
sottefraise
chauvegrille / calvegrillette
diaze-lights / dive-diazes
sweetbalers
brume of aromatic herbs
verdurous ocean