What does fuchsia mean?
Word: Fuchsia
Part of Speech: Noun
Meaning: Fuchsia means a small garden bush with drooping flowers, usually pink, red or purple.
How do you spell fuchsia?
Syllables: fuch - sia
Tricky part: The sh sound is spelt chs, an order that looks wrong to most pupils, so they swap the letters and write fuschia, or drop the c and write fushia.
Watch out for: fuschia, fushia, fuchia
Memory tip: The three letters in the middle, c, h and s, run in alphabet order.
Fuchsia in a sentence
Example 1: A fuchsia climbed the wall beside our holiday cottage in Coonoor.
Example 2: Bees kept visiting the fuchsia outside the classroom window.
Example 3: Grandpa waters his fuchsia every evening and talks to it as he does so.
Fun Fact
Fuchsia honours Leonhart Fuchs, a German doctor and plant expert of the 1500s. The plant was named after him around 1700, long after his lifetime.
Practise the CREST Way
Word Cookie
Insert the correct pair of letters to form a word:
f_chs_a
a) o, i
b) u, e
c) a, i
d) u, i
Show answer
d) u, i. The short vowel at the start is u, and the word closes with ia, like Asia.
Word Cookie
Find the misspelt word in the sentence:
During the flower show at Kodaikanal, the judges spent a long time admiring a fuchsia that a retired schoolteacher had raised from a tiny cuting in her kitchen garden.
a) admiring
b) cuting
c) fuchsia
d) judges
Show answer
b) cuting. A short vowel before ing doubles the t, so the word should be cutting; the other three are correct.
Mingle-Mangle
Unscramble the jumbled word in the sentence and choose the correct word:
Mum hung a basket of asiucfh by the door, and it swayed in the breeze all summer.
a) fuchsia
b) dahlia
c) begonia
d) freesia
Show answer
a) fuchsia. Look for the c: freesia, dahlia and begonia do not have one.
Spell-o-Spell
Three of these words are spelt correctly and one is misspelt. Choose the meaning of the misspelt word:
1. marigold 2. fuchsia 3. geranuim 4. hibiscus
a) an orange or yellow garden flower
b) a garden plant with red, pink or white flowers
c) a garden bush with flowers that hang down
d) a tropical plant with large bright flowers
Show answer
b) a garden plant with red, pink or white flowers. The i comes before the u in geranium.
Multiple Choice Questions
1. A fuchsia flower hangs from its stem much like which of these?
a) a flat plate
b) a tiny earring
c) a tall candle
d) a stone pillar
Show answer
b) a tiny earring
2. Where would you most expect fuchsias to do well?
a) on a salty seaside flat
b) in a hot desert courtyard
c) in a cool, damp hill garden
d) on a dry, sandy roadside
Show answer
c) in a cool, damp hill garden
