fructification

/ˈfrʌktəfəˌkeɪʃən/

Other forms: fructifications

Fructification is the process of growing fruit. During fructification, a pear tree will first grow fragrant blossoms before they develop into delicious pears.

When a plant undergoes fructification, you can also say it fructifies, or develops so that it can produce fruit. Both words stem from the Latin fructificare, "bear fruit," and its root fructus, which means both "fruit" and "profit or enjoyment." You can use fructification in this figurative way too, to mean "make productive." You might say, "The fructification of my lemonade stand means I can pay you back for all that sugar I borrowed!"

Definitions of fructification

1. noun

   the bearing of fruit
   type of:

   development, growing, growth, maturation, ontogenesis, ontogeny

   (biology) the process of an individual organism growing organically; a purely biological unfolding of events involved in an organism changing gradually from a simple to a more complex level
2. noun

   organs of fruiting (especially the reproductive parts of ferns and mosses)
   type of:

   reproductive structure

   the parts of a plant involved in its reproduction