Apple Grove and Orange Orchard?

Hello, you have A Way with Words.

Hey, Grant. How are you?

I’m doing well. Who are you? Where are you calling from?

My name’s Jeremy Robinson. I’m calling from Van Buren, Arkansas.

I have a question about two words that sometimes I use interchangeably.

It’s orchard and grove.

Okay, so my question is, what’s the difference between orchard and grove?

So, like, you could say, like, oh, I have, like, an apple orchard.

Or is it correct to say I have an apple grove?

Or can you interchange those words?

Right.

And then, so, apple grove and orange orchard?

Orchard.

Yeah, like an orchard.

Like, can you, is one of those words used for just one thing?

Or can you interchange them?

This is a great question.

I love this question.

Jeremy, this is a really good question.

How did you come up with this?

You were like standing in the produce section with the fruit in each hand.

I was driving down the road, honestly, with a friend.

And for some reason, we were having a conversation.

So he’s from India.

And we were just having a conversation about, we had driven by a Mexican restaurant and it said La Huerta.

And I told him, I was like, oh, I was like, that means like orchard in Spanish.

And so he was just like, and it just kind of popped up.

And I was just like, well, you could say this or you could say that.

And he’s just like, oh.

And then I was like, I don’t know.

I don’t know.

Yeah, well, there is some overlap there between the meaning of the two words.

Apple orchard is the term that you’re going to hear most often.

You’re not going to hear orange orchard very much.

It’s far, far outnumbered by orange grove and apple orchard.

And the difference is that an orchard is something that’s deliberately planted with the goal of harvesting fruit or nuts.

You know, they’re even rows of trees.

And a grove is a small group of trees that’s sometimes planted, but not necessarily for agricultural purposes.

It might be ornamental or it might have additional meaning attached.

You know, there’s kind of a sense of the sacred with some groves.

You know, today you talk about the academic world as being the groves of academe.

And that goes all the way back to the sacred olive groves outside of Athens where Plato taught.

So the bottom line is that every orchard is a grove, but not every grove is an orchard.

And I’m so glad that you brought up the word huerta in Spanish because that may well be related to the word orchard, actually, because it may go back to the Latin word hortus, which means garden and is a relative of horticulture.

So the Spanish word is H-U-E-R-T-A, huerta.

Yeah.

Yeah, huerta.

So orchard may come from Latin words that mean garden.

So it sounds a little clearer to me, but it sounds like you can say apple grove and you can say orange orchard, but most people don’t.

I haven’t looked this up, but let me ask you both.

Where do almonds as a nut fit?

Are they almond groves or almond orchards?

Oh, wow.

That’s a good question.

We should know this.

I know we have almond growers as listeners.

We’re going to find out.

Oh, an orchard.

Yeah, people.

I hope that lots of people call in and just be like, well, I use this for this and I use this for that.

Yeah, language is particular and people are particular about their language.

So who knows?

But, Jeremy, I love the question.

And call us again sometime.

We’d love to hear from you.

Oh, I will.

All right.

Well, thank you, guys.

Thank you, Martha.

Thank you, Grant.

Yeah, be well, dude.

Have a wonderful day.

Bye-bye.

You too.

All right.

Bye.

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