flora & fauna
plant and animal life
Today this word meansAll the plants, and all the animals, of a region.
Flora is the Roman goddess of flowers; fauna comes from Fauna, the goddess paired with Faunus, god of herds.
The terms hardened into scientific usage when Linnaeus published his Flora Suecica and Fauna Suecica in 1745.
The meaning has since stretched — gut bacteria are now called gut flora.