Perennial is a term originating from the Latin perennis . It is an adjective that refers to that which is incessant or continuous . For example: "Poverty is a perennial problem in Latin America" , "Success is perennial in this club" , "I am not going to let this become a perennial issue for us" .
For botany , a perennial plant is one that lives more than two years. Perennial herbs found in the wild are an example of a perennial plant.
Evergreen foliage
The adjective is also used to name the plant whose foliage remains green in all seasons of the year. This means that these trees or shrubs always have living leaves, unlike deciduous trees, whose leaves die each year and then sprout new ones.
In evergreen plants, the leaves live more than one season, so the youngest ones join the new ones and the tree is never bare, even though the older leaves do fall off.
Whenever this term that concerns us now is used, its opposite inevitably comes to mind, its antonym, which is none other than expires or expires. This is used to determine that a plant itself lasts a very short time.
Perfect examples of evergreen trees are the mimosa, the Greek strawberry tree, the fire tree, the carob , the red gum, the ficus, the olive tree, the cork oak or the Virginia oak . In contrast, deciduous trees include poplar, chestnut, birch or ash.
A philosophical current
Known as perennial philosophy , on the other hand, is the current of thought that supports the existence of a universal set of values that are common to all cultures. The person who proposed this concept was Agostino Steuco in a book from 1540 . Later, Gottfried Leibniz and Aldous Huxley continued this idea.
Precisely this last English philosopher carried out the creation of a work entitled "The Perennial Philosophy." It was in 1945 that he published it, which, as its name indicates, deeply analyzes the current philosophy with which it shares its name.
In this way, what he does is study in this work not only all those authors who have spoken about this type of thinking and who have developed it but also all the manifestations that throughout history have come to reflect the existence of that, that is, they are perfect examples of it.
The principles of perennial philosophy maintain that the physical world is not the only reality, but that there is another (non-physical) reality that cannot be understood from the senses. The human being, therefore, is the reflection of this double reality, with a material body governed by physical laws and another associated with the spirit and intellect.
Perennial crazy
In addition to all the above, we would have to point out that there is an adjective phrase that uses the word we are analyzing.
This is "perennially crazy" , which is used to refer to any person who has never been sane, who has always shown signs of not being "in their right mind" .